Yolanda Garcia

Practice Areas

YOLANDA CORNEJO GARCIA, co-leader of the firm’s Securities and Shareholder Litigation practice group and co-chair of the firm’s national diversity committee, represents corporations, corporate officers, and directors in matters including national class actions, multi-jurisdictional cases, domestic and international arbitrations, securities cases, and internal investigations. Yolanda successfully represented Forterra, Inc. in the resolution of a series of consolidated class action suits and achieved a complete victory on behalf of Forterra in a US$100 million earnout arbitration. On September 18, 2020, The American Lawyer selected Yolanda as a “Litigator of the Week” for her work on this case.

Yolanda has received numerous recognitions from the American Lawyer’s Litigator of the Week column for her leadership in Sidley’s representation of Aspen American Insurance Co. and Aspen Specialty Insurance Co. in its defense of COVID-19 Business Interruption insurance claims. She has been successfully representing Aspen American Insurance Co. and Aspen Specialty Insurance Co. since the beginning of the pandemic, in a flurry of litigation regarding business interruption coverage for losses due to COVID-19 closures. Yolanda’s leadership in these cases has resulted in an unblemished record of success across 24 lawsuits in state and federal court in Texas, Michigan, Kansas, Florida, Washington, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Illinois, including 10 putative class actions. Yolanda secured wins in 19 motions to dismiss to date and voluntary dismissals in two additional cases. Yolanda has represented Aspen in numerous appeals involving similar issues in the 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th Circuits, and secured appellate wins for Aspen on these matters in the 7th, 9th, and 11th Circuits.

Yolanda successfully defeated two separate attempts to bring a pending California action to Texas, on behalf of her client, ASICS America Corporation. First, by obtaining a stay of a second-filed Texas case in favor of ASICS’ first-filed California litigation, and again when ASICS’ opponent sought to bring the same claims for a third time before yet another Dallas district court. The court originally denied ASICS’ motion to strike and allowed the claims to move forward, but the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas reversed the lower court’s ruling and granted ASICS’ petition for a writ of mandamus.