Stuart Price is the managing partner of the Irvine office of Bryan Cave, LLP. Mr. Price is a trial lawyer, whose practice areas include lending and foreclosure related disputes, contract disputes, trade secret law, unfair competition, shareholder and partnership disputes, and employee theft and embezzlement.

Mr. Price has over thirty trials to his credit, all as lead counsel. He has won every one of his jury trials, including the successful defense of a publicly held company in a $200 million, bet-the-company jury trial involving claims of breach of fiduciary duty by a director, conspiracy to usurp corporate opportunities and unfair competition.

Mr. Price successfully defended a nationally known telecommunications giant in a lease dispute with the holder of an FCC license for broadcast rights on regulated frequencies. After a lengthy bench trial, the court ruled in favor of Mr. Price’s client, saving the client’s $40 million investment in the relevant market. The law firm that represented the license holder in the case later hired Mr. Price to represent the firm in a dispute with a departed partner.

Mr. Price represented a publicly held homebuilder in a dispute with a land seller over amounts claimed to be due under a price escalator clause in the purchase agreement. The case was tried in front of a retired California Appellate Justice against a prominent national firm. Mr. Price obtained a defense judgment for the client, and recovered more than a half million dollars in fees and costs from the other side.

Mr. Price represented a foreign owned manufacturer of electronic test equipment against claims by a disaffected shareholder of the company’s maintenance subsidiary. The shareholder claimed breach of fiduciary duty and other torts in connection with the parent company’s closure of the subsidiary and acquisition of its assets. Following a two-week jury trial, Mr. Price obtained a defense verdict on all counts.

Mr. Price represented a restaurant chain in an action to quiet title to fully entitled property on the San Francisco Bay. The client had contributed the property to a partnership formed with a developer. The developer claimed that the two-year period imposed by the partnership agreement for the developer to develop the property had not yet started to run. After a bench trial in Bankruptcy Court, Mr. Price obtained judgment in his client’s favor, quieting title to the property. The client promptly sold the property for more than $5 million, and successfully emerged from bankruptcy.

Mr. Price has also pursued several embezzlers on behalf of clients. In at least two such cases, based on information Mr. Price developed for the government, the employees entered guilty pleas on felony charges, and agreed to serve prison time and pay restitution.

Mr. Price represented a borrower in an action brought by the Resolution Trust Corporation to enforce a promissory note. The note was entitled "Recourse Promissory Note," and provided for recourse against the borrower in the event of default. Mr. Price’s client asserted that the note was intended to be non-recourse. By federal statute, agreements with federally regulated banking institutions not memorialized in the note instrument are unenforceable against the RTC upon takeover of the lender, except in certain exceptional circumstances. After a bench trial in Federal District Court, the trial court entered judgment in favor of Mr. Price’s client. The ruling was upheld on appeal in a published decision.

Recently, Mr. Price represented one of the nation’s largest defense contractor in the government’s investigation and criminal prosecution of a Chinese born engineer for theft of trade secrets and economic espionage.  The effort led to the first successful prosecution of a defendant under the Economic Espionage Act, and earned Mr. Price a commendation from the Director of the FBI.

Bar and Court Admissions

California, 1986

United States District Courts for the Central, Eastern, Northern and Southern Districts of California

Education

University of California-Los Angeles, J.D., 1986

University of California-Santa Barbara, B.A., with high honors, 1983