Marina Tsatalis

Practice Areas

Marina Tsatalis is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she specializes in disputes involving employment and trade secrets law. Marina advises and represents the world's leading technology, communications, pharmaceutical, and life sciences companies in significant trade secret and employee mobility matters, and her advice is sought regularly by executives, legal departments, and boards of directors on complex, high-visibility, and high-value restrictive covenant, Sarbanes-Oxley, and other employment-related issues.

Marina has extensive experience serving as lead trial counsel, and has successfully litigated a broad spectrum of cases in state and federal courts and in arbitrations throughout the country, including in California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Vermont. She also has argued cases before the California Court of Appeals and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and was successful in obtaining a unanimous published decision from the Ninth Circuit recognizing for the first time an affirmative defense to employer liability for harassment by a supervisor under California law in Kohler v. Inter-Tel Technologies. In addition to numerous decisions granting summary judgment for her clients from both judges and arbitrators, she has obtained multiple defense verdicts on behalf of her clients and has successfully prosecuted several high-value cross-claims. Marina's trial team also recently obtained a favorable jury verdict on behalf of a former executive in his breach of contract action against his former employer, resulting in a judgment exceeding $20 million, making it one of the largest judgments ever entered in Sonoma County history. She has substantial experience as lead counsel in complex multi-party cases, representing both multiple defendants and bringing claims against multiple plaintiffs, including in a recent lawsuit against an overseas pharmaceutical company and numerous other defendants in a case involving breach of a covenant not to compete, breach of fiduciary duty, and trade secret misappropriation and defending a dozen defendants in an expansive lawsuit alleging securities, trade secret, fraud, and contract claims arising out of an acquisition. Marina's litigation experience also includes successfully defending cases against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and various state agencies.