Brian A. McAleenan
Partner
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Phone: +1 312 499 6762
- Duane Morris LLP
190 South LaSalle Street, Suite 3700
Chicago, IL 60603-3433
USA
Brian A. McAleenan has a broad commercial and regulatory litigation practice that includes trials in federal court and contested hearings before regulatory bodies. Mr. McAleenan has litigated disputes involving breach of contract, securities class actions, common law fraud, fraudulent transfer, price fixing, breach of fiduciary duty (including shareholder class actions) and evidence spoliation, as well as cases involving breach of tariff and regulatory violations under the Communications Act and Federal Power Act.
Mr. McAleenan’s recent matters include: playing a lead role in a jury trial on a breach of contract action claim that resulted in a favorable defense verdict for a large property remediation company (which followed obtaining dismissal of fraud and negligence claims against the company on summary judgment); securing a finding of no liability (including recovery of all attorneys’ fees and expert costs) in a breach of contract action for a major telecommunications carrier; and winning summary judgment for an investment fund in a fraudulent transfer action, and then preserving that victory on appeal, which involved an issue of first impression in the Seventh Circuit. Mr. McAleenan also devised the winning strategy, developed the factual record and wrote the briefs that led to a seminal FCC ruling in favor of a major telecommunications carrier that concerned a novel traffic routing scheme.
Mr. McAleenan is a 1998 magna cum laude graduate of the University of Illinois College of Law, where he was a member of the Law Review and elected to the Order of the Coif, and a graduate, with honors, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Areas of Practice
Commercial Litigation
Telecommunications and Technology
Fraudulent Transfer
Fiduciary Duty and M&A
Energy
Regulatory
Representative Matters
Lead trial counsel for AT&T in case presenting novel issues of whether the rural CLEC exemption is available to local carriers that (i) have both incumbent and CLEC operations, and/or (ii) offer, but do not provide, service in urban areas.
Lead counsel for AT&T before Federal Communications Commission in dispute concerning local telephone carrier’s liability to refund amounts paid to a billing agent engaged in fraud; final Order pending.
Represented AT&T in federal court and the Federal Communications Commission in access arbitrage dispute concerning whether conference call providers were “end users” under governing tariffs and regulations, as well as the obligation of competitive carriers to provide direct connections to long distance carriers, that settled on terms the client found favorable.
Represented AT&T in transport charge dispute that resulted in victory before the Federal Communications Commission with a seminal Order barring “mileage pumping” as an unreasonable practice.
Lead trial counsel for AT&T in dispute concerning both two-stage calling, on which the carrier prevailed on summary judgment, and proper application of the VoIP-symmetry rule, which settled favorably on the eve of trial.
Admissions
- Illinois
- U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
- Trial Bar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
- U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
Education
- University of Illinois College of Law, J.D., magna cum laude, 1998
- Law Review
- Order of the Coif - University of Illinois, B.S., with honors, 1995
Honors and Awards
- Listed in Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business, 2023-2025
Experience
- Duane Morris LLP
- Partner, 2020-present - Sidley Austin LLP
- Partner, 2007-2020
- Associate, 1998-2007