Ms. Ciani is a passionate and dedicated Pillsbury-trained litigator with over 32 years of litigation experience representing individuals and businesses against large corporations and government entities. She has successfully obtained complete defense verdicts and defense settlements for clients facing multimillion dollar lawsuits. When representing plaintiffs, Ms. Ciani has secured millions of dollars in settlements and jury verdicts for her clients.

She has litigated complex patent infringement/trade secret, contract, tort, and antitrust cases in federal and state courts. Successes include the dismissal with prejudice at the pleadings stage of a patent infringement and tort case filed in the Central District of California against her client, a small Chinese company, as well as securing a $15 million jury verdict for her plaintiff clients in Integra vs. Merck KGaA, a biotech patent infringement case involving a promising cancer drug.

Ms. Ciani successfully represented a class of California consumers against the NFL in an antitrust class action case involving NFL team apparel. She also developed and implemented plaintiffs’ damages theory in an antitrust class action case involving a billion-dollar-a-year consumer product that resulted in a very favorable settlement for the class.

Ms. Ciani defended an individual and her small company in a trade secret misappropriation lawsuit filed by her former corporate employer. Not long after she filed counterclaims against the former employer for violating California’s labor statutes and other tort laws, the case settled in her client’s favor.

Ms. Ciani’s extensive business experience includes co-owning and operating a very profitable sports business for 13 years, earning millions of dollars in gross sales. She draws on her business and in-house counsel experience to very effectively represent her business clients and help them achieve the best possible litigation outcome.

Ms. Ciani is a former Board of Director for a child refugee nonprofit. She provided pro bono legal advice on employment law, children’s rights, and landlord/tenant matters to nonprofit servicing refugees from war-torn countries. Ms. Ciani founded a girls’ soccer program at the nonprofit to teach refugee girls that they can fully participate in every aspect of American life.

Ms. Ciani is the Co-Author of the “Protecting Biotechnology” Chapter in Trade Secrets Practice in California (CEB) and the Author of “Successful Strategies for Markman Hearings” in AIPLA QJ (American Intellectual Property Law Association).

University of California, Berkeley

Political Economy of Industrial Societies, International Economics, B.A. with distinction; Regents Scholar.

University of California, Los Angeles (J.D., 1990).

Ms. Ciani is a member of the State Bar of California.

She is admitted to practice before all California courts and the Central, Southern and Northern Districts of California.