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Frederick W. Chockley III

Frederick Chockley (“Fritz”) concentrates his practice on civil litigation, including international litigation and commercial litigation. Among his more notable cases, Mr. Chockley has twice won jury verdicts for German clients in American courts. In 1999, after a four-week trial in federal court in Kansas, he won a jury verdict for a German manufacturer. A Midwestern accounting firm, hit with a $23 million malpractice award, tried to shift its liability to the German client with a claim of fraud. The jury rejected the claim and found for Mr. Chockley's German client.

Mr. Chockley, in an earlier case, after a six-week jury trial, won a defense verdict for a related German company in a small Virginia town. A “hometown” American company had sued the German client for breach of contract, fraud and conspiracy. In addition to the defense verdict, the jury awarded nearly $1 million in favor of the German client on its counterclaim—at the time, one of the largest such awards in Virginia jurisprudence.

Mr. Chockley recovered an Austrian bank’s $23 million investment in a publicly traded American sunglasses manufacturer. The American company had refused to permit the bank to convert its convertible preferred shares into common, and so securities fraud and other claims were filed in federal court in New York. The litigation forced the sale of the company, providing the bank with a recovery of more than 100 percent of its investment.

Mr. Chockley commuted almost weekly to Puerto Rico from 1998 until mid-1999, where he was a leader of the trial team that won a substantial settlement for Puerto Rico's largest newspaper against the Governor of the Commonwealth and others in a mammoth and innovative First Amendment case over retaliation against editorial criticism.

Mr. Chockley's extensive and diverse civil litigation experience ranges from the defense of a major oil company in an environmental suit (arising out of alleged leaking underground storage tanks) to the defense of foundation trustees in a suit over control of a charitable foundation. His experience includes litigation of corporate disputes involving breach of contract, fraud, conspiracy, unfair competition, defamation and other business torts; First Amendment litigation; employment discrimination; property tax refund actions; and arbitrations before the American Arbitration Association and the National Association of Securities Dealers.

Mr. Chockley was the coordinator of the litigation practice group in Baker Hostetler’s Washington office from 1996 to 2011. He attended the National Institute for Trial Advocacy at the University of Colorado in 1988. In 1986, Mr. Chockley was named Young Lawyer of the Year by the Young Lawyers Section of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia for his leadership of the Section's Community Law Week Committee. He also served as Treasurer of the Section and Chair of the Civil Jury Instructions Committee. Prior to law school, he served as an aide to Senator Robert Taft, Jr., and as Legislative Director for Representative Bill Gradison on Capitol Hill.