Marvin Putnam is a partner in the international law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, principally based in their Century City office. He is a member of O’Melveny’s august Business Trial and Litigation Practice, which has been named as a finalist in The American Lawyer’s “Litigation Department of the Year” competition every year since the contest’s inception. Named one of Lawdragon’s “500 Leading Lawyers in America,” Marvin has long been a regular on the profession’s myriad “Best of” lists, ranging from Law 360’s “Trial Lawyer of the Year” to the Hollywood Reporter’s “Power Lawyers.” He has an international practice, representing clients in major litigations in a wide variety of areas, including entertainment, intellectual property and business torts. In addition, he is the Worldwide Hiring Partner for O’Melveny.
Marvin has represented clients in numerous industries on a range of issues in trial and appellate courts, both federal and state, throughout the country and abroad. And as a trial attorney, his practice has run the gamut from the Exxon Valdez spill to the recovery of World War II-era assets from international banks. While Marvin is first and foremost a trial lawyer, for more than twenty years a principal focus of his work has been the representation of media. For instance, Marvin was lead defense counsel in the six-month wrongful death trial this past year brought by Michael Jackson’s family against concert promoter AEG Live. That successful defense was named one of the ten most significant defense verdicts of the year by the nation’s leading legal journals. Marvin has also handled numerous defamation actions ranging from the answer to the appellate stages. Marvin provides prepublication review for national news, variety, and talk show programs as well as national publications and film and television studios. He has represented, at both the trial and appellate levels, the nation’s largest cable company in a series of federal actions relating to violations of the Federal Communications Act, international media entities in numerous federal and state defamation and invasion-of-privacy matters, film and television concerns requiring a First Amendment defense, journalists in numerous reporters’ privilege subpoena actions, and media entities seeking both court and legislative access. At the trial level, Marvin has—amongst other matters—successfully defended a movie producer against the breach of contract action brought by international pulp novelist Clive Cussler, successfully represented J.K. Rowling in her action to protect her literary rights against infringement by copycats, and fought an invasion-of-privacy claim brought against the distributor of a reality television series. In addition, Marvin often works on complex transactional matters that call for a litigator’s eye.
Marvin’s illustrative professional experience includes trial and other litigation matters for such clients as AEG, AEG Live, AFG, American Idol, Alaska Airlines, American Media, Inc., The Anschutz Company, Artisan Entertainment, Barclays Bank, Cerberus Partners, CBS, Chamber of Commerce of the United States, Claremont McKenna College, Clearwater Capital Partners, CNN, Disney-ABC Television Group, Columbia University, E! Entertainment, ExxonMobil, Film District, FreemantleMedia, General Mills, HBO, HBO Films, Hollywood Foreign Press Association, ICM, IDT Corp., International Olympic Committee, J.K. Rowling, J.P. Morgan Chase & Company, Kaplan Stahler Agency, King World Productions, Legendary Entertainment, Lions Gate Entertainment, Management 360, MGM, Inc., Miramax Films, MOCA, Motion Picture Association of America, NBC, OpenGate Capital, Paramount Pictures Corp., Participant Media, Pivot TV, Rothchild Freres, Siegfried and Roy, Sony Pictures Entertainment, SpyGlass Entertainment, Summit Entertainment, Time, Time Warner, Time Warner Cable, TV Guide, Twentieth Century Fox, Univision, Walt Disney Co., and Warner Bros.
