Anthony E. DiResta is a partner in Holland & Knight's Washington, D.C., office and a member of the firm's Litigation and Dispute Resolution Practice. Mr. DiResta focuses his practice on governmental consumer protection investigations involving allegations of deceptive, unfair or abusive business practices; charges of false advertising; and privacy and data security matters. He is also engaged in complex commercial litigation at the trial and appellate levels. Mr. DiResta is the co-chair of the firm's Consumer Protection Defense and Compliance Team.
In June of 2015, Mr. DiResta was honored as one of the nation's top "Regulatory Trailblazers & Pioneers" by The National Law Journal. It is an exclusive award that honors a select and prominent group of lawyers in the country who are leaders in successfully navigating the ever-changing fields of regulatory and compliance law.
Mr. DiResta is a former director of the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Southeast Regional office, where he supervised many of the enforcement, investigative, litigation and outreach activities of the Competition and Consumer Protection Bureaus of the agency in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. Among his accomplishments is his initiation and coordination of a consumer protection law enforcement sweep – including the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission, 15 attorneys general and the FTC – that resulted in more than 25 lawsuits and proceedings throughout the country. Under his leadership, the Southeast Regional office received the John Marshall Award from the U.S. Attorney General for its enforcement achievements. Mr. DiResta also served as a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division.
A seasoned advocate, Mr. DiResta has assisted clients in bet-the-company governmental investigations and litigation pursued by federal agencies such as the FTC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the DOJ, as well as in state enforcement proceedings involving state attorneys general. Specifically, Mr. DiResta has successfully defended companies and individuals in over 50 governmental investigations – with many of those investigations being closed. His experience includes trials and appearances before many federal and state courts, class actions, multidistrict litigation – and many of his accomplishments are highlighted in reported decisions with cutting-edge precedents. In addition, Mr. DiResta serves as general counsel to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), the advertising trade association that focuses on social media marketing.
Mr. DiResta is widely published in the areas of commercial litigation, FTC and CFPB matters, governmental investigations, consumer protection and antitrust law, with many articles cited by the courts and law review publications. In fact, one of his articles – "Software Support and Hardware Maintenance Practices: Tying Considerations," Computer Lawyer, 1991 – was cited with approval by the U.S. Supreme Court in Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services, Inc., a leading antitrust decision.
