Daniel M. Petrocelli

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Daniel M. Petrocelli is an American defense attorney, known in part for his work in a 1997 wrongful death civil suit against O.J. Simpson and for reperesenting Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling. He is a partner at law firm O'Melveny & Myers LLP.

[edit] Career

Daniel Petrocelli graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a degree in economics (he began as a music major but switched to economics after two years), and then moved on to the Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles where he received his juris doctor in 1980. He graduated first in his class from Southwestern and was also editor-in-chief of the Southwestern Law Review.

Petrocelli first gained national media exposure in 1997 when he represented Fred Goldman, the father of murder victim Ron Goldman, in a wrongful death civil suit against O.J. Simpson. Petrocelli successfully argued the case, in spite of Simpson's 1995 acquittal in the related 1994 criminal murder case, and a jury awarded the Goldman family $8.5 million dollars in damages. His book about the case, Triumph of Justice: The Final Judgment on the Simpson Saga (1998), written with co-author Peter Knobler, became a national bestseller.^{[citation needed]}

In 2001, Petrocelli took on the legendary Bert Fields in a battle royale in Los Angeles Superior Court in the celebrated case of Stephen Slesinger Inc. v Walt Disney Studios, which remains active and is the longest-running case in that court's history (it was filed in 1991). Petrocelli's artful maneuverings won a dismissal of the case after Fields had won a $200 million preliminary judgment but was forced to recuse himself. The case concerns the merchandising royalties paid by Disney to the heirs of Stephen Slesinger, a branding pioneer who obtained merchandising rights from Pooh author A.A. Milne in 1929. The clash between the two famous attorneys was covered in depth by Joe Shea of The American Reporter, an online daily newspaper that now offers an [archive] of 28 articles about the case with an extensive discussion of Petrocelli's role.

Petrocelli's next high-profile client was former Enron Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling, whom Petrocelli has represented since 2004, who was tried on charges of fraud and insider trading in 2006. Even though he had never handled a criminal case before, Petrocelli became Skilling's lead defense counsel. Despite his vigorous defense, for which Skilling still owes a reported $30,000,000.00, a jury found Skilling guilty of nineteen out of the twenty-eight counts against him, including one count of conspiracy, one count of insider trading (although he was acquitted of the other nine counts of this particular charge), five counts of making false statements to auditors, and twelve counts of securities fraud. For these crimes, Skilling was sentenced to serve over twenty-four years in federal prison.