William J. Doyle
William Doyle is a founding partner of Doyle Lowther LLP. Since 1998 Mr. Doyle has focused his practice on representing individuals, institutional investors and consumers as plaintiffs in complex litigation involving securities fraud, mergers and acquisitions, ERISA, consumer fraud, Internet privacy and defective products.
A native of San Diego, California, Mr. Doyle graduated from the University of San Diego with an undergraduate degree in economics. After working in the legal field, Mr. Doyle earned his law degree in 1996 from the California Western School of Law on an accelerated, two-year program.
Prior to founding Doyle Lowther, Mr. Doyle was a partner in the national law firm of Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP. While at Coughlin Stoia and its predecessor firms, he represented clients in complex class action litigations and was responsible for investigating and initiating new cases. Mr. Doyle also played a lead role in developing the firm’s first portfolio monitoring program for institutional investors.
In 2003 Mr. Doyle filed the first case against the New York Stock Exchange and its seven specialist trading firms for illegal trading practices and market manipulation. While at his prior firm, Mr. Doyle had the privilege of representing the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) as lead counsel in the NYSE securities litigation.
In the Trans Union Corp. privacy litigation Mr. Doyle served as co-lead counsel representing millions of consumers whose private credit information was alleged to have been unlawfully disclosed to third parties. Mr. Doyle successfully certified a statutory damages class action of approximately 9 million Illinois consumers and helped negotiate a nationwide settlement for consumers valued at over $109 million.
Mr. Doyle has been appointed by federal judges to be lead or co-lead counsel in numerous multidistrict litigation proceedings, including, MDL-1329 In re RealNetworks, Inc. Privacy Litigation; MDL-1341, America Online, Inc. Version 5.0 Software; MDL-1346, In re Amazon.com Privacy Litigation; MDL-1350, In re Trans Union Corp. Privacy Litigation; MDL-1352, In re DoubleClick Inc. Privacy Litigation; MDL-1381 Toys R Us, Inc. Privacy Litigation; and MDL-1400, In re Pharmatrak Privacy Litigation.
Mr. Doyle served as lead or co-lead counsel for plaintiffs in a series of landmark Internet privacy cases. Applying unique and untested legal theories, Mr. Doyle and his co-counsel achieved important new privacy protections for online consumers. For example, in the In re Pharmatrak Privacy Litigation Mr. Doyle took the lead in writing a successful First Circuit appellate brief that overturned summary judgment and applied, for the first time, federal wiretap statutes to Internet technology. In the Amazon.com case, a federal court certified the first nationwide class for Internet privacy claims and a settlement in the DoubleClick litigation provided important online privacy protections for nearly every user of the Internet in the United States.
Mr. Doyle has also served as co-lead counsel in complex product defect litigation, including a lawsuit against Apple for defects in the DVD player of its iMac personal computer ($47 million settlement); a class action against SBC Communications for defective DSL Internet service ($55 million settlement); and a class action against America Online, Inc. for defects in its version 5.0 software ($15.5 million settlement).
Mr. Doyle is admitted to practice in state and federal courts throughout California, the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, and the United States Court of Appeals for the First and Second Circuits.
Mr. Doyle is a member of the American Bar Association, the American Association for Justice, The State Bar of California, the San Diego County Bar Association, and the Consumer Attorneys of San Diego.