Pat Lundvall

Practice Areas

Commercial & Complex Litigation

Appellate

Employment & Labor Law

Career

Pat Lundvall is a highly skilled litigator and Chair of McDonald Carano’s Commercial & Complex Litigation Practice. Since 2001, Pat has been Board Certified in Civil Trial Law and Civil Practice Advocacy by the National Board of Trial Advocacy (which awarded her a President’s Award in 2023) and is also Board Certified as a Civil Trial Advocacy Specialist by the State Bar of Nevada (the first attorney certified in the State).

Pat’s clients include local, state, national and international businesses of all sizes operating in nearly every sector of Nevada’s economy. She represents them as their primary outside counsel in every phase of complex commercial litigation. Pat also serves as Nevada counsel in complex multiparty and multidistrict litigation, and out-of-state law firms regularly select Pat to represent their clients when suit is necessary in Nevada.

Pat has successfully represented clients in judge and jury trials in state and federal courts, as well as on appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. She has extensive experience handling class actions and complex commercial litigation involving business entity disputes and dissolutions, joint venture and partnership disputes, shareholder derivative litigation, merger-related litigation and control disputes, breach of contract, claims of government fraud, unfair trade practices, unfair competition, RICO matters, antitrust issues, and fraud, breach of fiduciary duty and tortious interference claims, among others. Pat also handles matters involving employment law, defamation, deprivation of constitutional rights, and wrongful death.

Pat also dedicates time and expertise to pro bono work, including a recent case she successfully tried before Judge Joanna S. Kishner. The case was brought on behalf of a young female Navy recruiter who is also responsible for the care of her mother and young son. The recruiter purchased a home with a latent defect that was known to the seller but not disclosed at the time of sale. The judge awarded compensatory damages and then trebled them per the statute, and the statute also allowed for an award of fees. The case settled for the full amount of compensatory damages and costs. Pat accepted the case through the Office of Military Legal Assistance under the Attorney General’s Office, which is a pro bono service program that McDonald Carano helped create.

Professional Memberships

Senior Fellow, Litigation Counsel of America

Co-Founder and Advisory Board member, Complex Commercial Litigation Institute

Member, Southern Nevada Association of Women Attorneys

Nevada Fellow, American Bar Foundation

Former Commissioner and Past Chair, Nevada State Athletic Commission (2007-2016)

Member, Public Private Partnership Advisory Panel to the Nevada Department of Transportation (2007)

Publications

Publications

Leadership Q&A, “How I Made Practice Group Chair,” Law.com, March 22, 2024

Feature Interview, “Legal Goddess Leads the Way in Commercial Litigation at Every Judicial Level, Including the High Bench,” Of Counsel: The Legal Practice and Management Report, November 2023

Quoted, “Lawyers Must Navigate Client Privacy Before Suits See Public Eye,” Bloomberg Law, June 2, 2022

Quoted, “‘This is Not a Criminal Trial,’ Ford’s Lawyer Tells Judiciary Republicans,” National Law Journal, September 25, 2018

Quoted, “How Companies Can Avoid Pitfalls of a Bad Sexual Harassment Policy,” Corporate Counsel, November 22, 2017

Quoted, “Lawyers as HR Leaders? The Jury’s Still Out,” Bloomberg BNA – Human Resources Report, July 10, 2017

Quoted, “Avoiding a Business Foul: Practical Steps to Dodge Business Litigation,” Nevada Business Magazine, March 1, 2017

Feature Interview, “Gender Blindness: Meet Pat Lundvall,” My Vegas magazine, January 1, 2017

Author, Chapter on Pretrial Conferences, Nevada Civil Practice Manual

Author, The Rise and Fall of the Antitrust Exemption for the Business of Insurance, John Stauffer Memorial published by the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, June 1989

Presentations

Presenter, “Litigation v. Arbitration: What to Choose and Why,” Litigation Counsel of America, Spring Retreat, April 17-19, 2024

Scheduled Presenter, Women In Law Series – Appellate Law, Southern Nevada Association of Women Attorneys, August 3, 2023

Presenter, Nevada Supreme Court Roundup, Association of Corporate Counsel, May 25, 2022

Personal

Community Involvement

Board Member, Secretary, Friends of the Nevada Mansion (current)

Board Member, Nevada Military Support Alliance (since its founding in 2003)

Work Highlights

Fremont Emergency Services (Mandavia), et al. vs. UnitedHealth Group, Inc. et al., case number A 19-792978-B (December 7, 2021)Pat served as lead Nevada trial counsel in a case that upended the national out-of-network healthcare reimbursement system with a jury verdict that awarded $60 million in punitive damages and $2.65 million in compensatory damages to three Nevada-based emergency room provider practice groups affiliated with Tennessee-based TeamHealth. The three groups filed suit in 2019 against UnitedHealthcare for underpaying out-of-network emergency room healthcare providers. After five days of jury selection, Pat presented opening statement before Eighth District Court Judge Nancy Allf in Las Vegas. Pat’s team at McDonald Carano conceived and directed all discovery; drafted, argued and won all of their 55 substantive pretrial motions; successfully convinced the court to sanction UnitedHealthcare with an adverse inference in the form of a jury instruction that was critical in closing arguments; and drafted and successfully opposed UnitedHealthcare’s two petitions for writ review and two motions to stay before the Nevada Supreme Court that UnitedHealthcare had attempted to use to prevent the case from being tried promptly. Pat and her team also drafted the briefs and Pat argued a critical case before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that established new precedent on ERISA preemption. Without a victory in that case, all cases across the nation brought by TeamHealth against UnitedHealthcare and other insurance carriers were at risk of being dismissed. Pat’s oral argument on 02/04/2021 before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is available here.

Endo Health Solutions, Inc., et al. v. The Second Judicial District Court (Washoe), et al. and City of Reno (Real Party in Interest) 81121, before the Supreme Court of the State of Nevada, En Banc. (Opinion dated July 29, 2021) Pat led oral argument, representing her clients (Petitioners Endo Health Solutions, Inc. and Endo Pharmaceuticals, Inc.) as well as 25+ attorneys and their clients. The successful outcome involved the original petition for a writ of mandamus challenging a district court order denying in part a motion to dismiss in a tort action. The Supreme Court held that a city’s power to maintain a lawsuit must be derived from an express grant of power or fall within a “matter of local concern” as defined in applicable statutory language. Though the district court found that the action involved a “matter of local concern,” it used its own definition of that term and misapplied the statutory definition. Thus, the Supreme Court remanded, directing the district court to reconsider the motion to dismiss and strictly apply the definition of a “matter of local concern” (as set forth in NRS 268.003) to the City’s claims. The district court granted in full Pat’s client’s and other co-defendants’ motion to dismiss all pending municipality and county cases filed in Nevada related to the opioid epidemic.

California Franchise Tax Board v. Gilbert P. Hyatt After a complete defense victory, on April 6, 2022, the Clark County District Court awarded McDonald Carano’s client $2,262,815.56 in recoverable costs, representing a conclusion to more than 24 years of litigation in a case that also overturned U.S. Supreme Court precedent dating back to 1979. Pat led a litigation and appellate team representing the California Franchise Tax Board since 1998 in a matter adverse to inventor Gilbert P. Hyatt which went before the U.S. Supreme Court three times and the Nevada Supreme Court numerous times. The case was closely watched throughout the country as it evolved from a simple state income tax dispute to a broader constitutional concern about state sovereignty and whether a private party may sue a non-consenting state in another state’s courts. Hyatt, who had moved to Nevada from California, complained the FTB had committed torts while auditing him. In the first case, he won hundreds of millions of dollars in Nevada state courts, but the FTB appealed. In 2016, the second time the parties appeared at the Supreme Court, Hyatt’s award was greatly reduced, but on the constitutional matter of whether Hall should be overturned, the court split 4-4 in the wake of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, spurring the FTB to come back in another attempt to overturn Nevada v. Hall. In a 5-4 decision from Justice Clarence Thomas, the justices overturned their 1979 precedent in Nevada v. Hall that had allowed such suits and handed a victory to the FTB. For California and more than 40 states that joined as amici, the decision is significant as a resident of one state will no longer be able to sue another state except in its own courts. The May 2019 SCOTUS ruling is available here. Law360 reported on the May 2019 SCOTUS ruling in an article titled “States Can’t Be Sued In Other States’ Courts, Justices Say.”

Education

Awards