Commercial Litigation
Contract, fiduciary-duty, and trade-secret disputes for closely held companies and funds — tried, not just settled.
Los Angeles · Trial Lawyers · Est. 1994
The firm other firmscall when it goes to trial.
High-stakes business disputes, tried to verdict in California’s state and federal courts for three decades.
$480M+recovered for clients
200+jury & bench trials
31years in Los Angeles
18published appellate opinions
01Practice
Six ways a business ends up in court.
We spend our whole careers on them.
Class Action Defense
Certification fights and trial defense in consumer and wage-and-hour classes across California state and federal courts.
Employment Litigation
Executive separations, PAGA actions, and retaliation claims — for employers who would rather win than write checks.
White Collar & Investigations
Grand-jury subpoenas, internal investigations, and parallel proceedings, handled quietly and early.
Real Estate & Land Use
Development disputes, CEQA challenges, and partnership breakups over the properties that shape this city.
Appeals & Writs
Preserving the record at trial and briefing it on appeal — in the California Courts of Appeal and the Ninth Circuit.
02Results
Verdicts are our marketing.
Past results do not guarantee future outcomes — but they do show what a jury hears when we stand up.
- $86.5MJury verdict
Trade-secret misappropriation for a precision-manufacturing client against a departing executive team.
- $42MSettlement
Construction-defect recovery for the owner of a downtown mixed-use tower, on the eve of trial.
- Defense verdictClass action
Complete defense of a 2,900-member wage-and-hour class action after a six-week trial.
- $23.8MArbitration award
Partnership-dissolution award for the founding partner of a regional development group.
- Published reversalNinth Circuit
Securities-fraud dismissal affirmed in a decision now cited throughout the circuit.
03The Firm
“Cases are won in the details everyone else finds tedious — the deposition read twice, the exhibit nobody else pulled. That is the whole secret, and it is not a secret.”
— Eleanor V. Harland, Managing Partner
Harland & Cruz is deliberately small: fourteen lawyers, one office, no leverage model. Partners try their own cases. We take fewer matters than we are offered, and we prepare every one of them as if the other side will not blink — because the ones who matter never do.
04Attorneys
Fourteen lawyers. No associates hiding the ball.
The partner you meet is the partner who tries your case.
Eleanor V. Harland
Managing Partner
Former federal prosecutor. Thirty-one years of trial work; twelve verdicts over eight figures. Fellow, American College of Trial Lawyers.
Marcos Cruz
Chair, Trial Practice
Has picked more Los Angeles juries than any lawyer his age. Daily Journal Top 100 for six consecutive years.
Dana Whitfield-Oh
Partner, Employment
Defends California's hardest employment cases — PAGA, class, and executive disputes — for employers across the West.
Julian Park
Partner, Appeals
Former Ninth Circuit clerk. Forty-one arguments in the state and federal courts of appeal; eleven published opinions.
05Consultation
Bring us the dispute. We’ll tell you the truth about it.
An initial consultation is a candid assessment — strengths, exposure, cost, and whether this is a case we would try.
555 South Grand Avenue, Suite 2900Los Angeles, California 90071
(213) 555-0164 · intake@harlandcruz.example