Pisanelli Bice, a Las Vegas-based law firm, added three new attorneys. Brianna Smith joins the firm as of counsel. Her area of expertise is in civil litigation with an emphasis on business disputes, Section 1983 claims, and the health care industry. Smith served as a deputy chief, assistant U.S. attorney for the Department of Justice in the District of Nevada. Daniel Brady joins the firm as an associate with a focus on commercial litigation. His previous experience includes clerking for the Elissa Cadish of the Nevada Supreme Court. Tyler Stevens joined Pisanelli Bice as a law clerk while attending the William S. Boyd School of Law at UNLV. After completing his juris doctorate and passing the bar, he was promoted to an associate position. His area of practice focuses on civil litigation and business disputes
LAS VEGAS – (Aug. 18, 2022) – Attorneys with Las Vegas-based Pisanelli Bice PLLC have been recognized by Best Lawyers©, a national peer-reviewed lawyer-ranking service. Five attorneys with the boutique law firm will appear in the 29th edition of The Best Lawyers in America© publication for their litigation work in Las Vegas.
Founding partner James J. Pisanelli has been recognized by Best Lawyers for the past 17 years. For 2023, he was selected for his work in bet-the-company litigation, commercial litigation, construction law, construction litigation, and real estate litigation.
The Best Lawyers in America© publication listed partner Todd L. Bice for the 16th consecutive year. For 2023, he was selected for his work in bet-the company litigation, appellate practice, commercial litigation, First Amendment litigation, land use and zoning litigation, and mergers and acquisitions litigation. Notably, he was also honored as a 2023 Las Vegas “Lawyer of the Year” in the category of bet-the-company litigation.
Managing partner Debra Spinelli has been recognized by Best Lawyers for the past 11 years. For 2023, she was listed for her work in commercial litigation, construction litigation and health care litigation. For the fifth consecutive year, of counsel attorney M. Magali Mercera was recognized for her work in commercial litigation.
New to Best Lawyers this year is associate attorney Emily Buchwald who is a recipient of the Las Vegas “Ones to Watch” award in the categories of civil rights law and commercial litigation.
For more than four decades, Best Lawyers publications have earned the respect of the profession, the media and the public as the most reliable, unbiased source of legal referrals anywhere for more than 70 countries worldwide. It has become universally regarded as the definitive guide to legal excellence. The 29th edition of The Best Lawyers in America© highlights the top six percent of private practicing attorneys in the US. Recognition by Best Lawyers is solely based on exhaustive peer review surveys and only a single lawyer in each practice area and community is honored with a “Lawyer of the Year” award.
For more information about Best Lawyers, visit www.bestlawyers.com.
About Best Lawyers:
Best Lawyers is the oldest and most respected lawyer ranking service in the world. For more than four decades, Best Lawyers has assisted those in need of legal services to identify the lawyers best qualified to represent them in distant jurisdictions or unfamiliar specialties. Best Lawyers lists are published in leading local, regional, and national publications across the globe.
Brittnie Watkins, an attorney with the Las Vegas law firm Pisanelli Bice PLLC, has been named by Gov. Steve Sisolak to the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
Her appointment is effective May 3.
She replaces Terry Johnson, whose term ended this month and who has been a board member since November 2012.
“I am confident Brittnie is the right person for this crucial appointment,” Sisolak said in a release Tuesday.
“Brittnie’s impressive educational background and legal experience in the gaming industry will make her an excellent addition to Nevada’s Gaming Control Board and to our state,” Sisolak said. “As Nevada’s gaming industry continues to recover from the pandemic, it’s critical that we remain the gold standard and operate with the highest integrity, and I am confident Brittnie will help us achieve that goal.”
Watkins’ first Control Board meeting will be May 5.
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SAN FRANCISCO — The founder and former CEO of right-leaning social media site Parler is suing the company he created and its controlling owner, political megadonor Rebekah Mercer, alleging his ownership stake was taken from him.
John Matze, who founded Parler in 2018 with funding from Mercer, filed the suit in Nevada District Court on Monday. Matze has said he was forced out of the company in early February, just weeks after Parler became embroiled in controversy surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, resulting in the site being knocked offline for more than a month.
The suit, which was announced in a news release by Matze’s attorneys and uploaded online by the Las Vegas Sun, names Parler, Mercer, interim CEO Mark Meckler and investors Jeffrey Wernick and Dan Bongino as defendants, as well as a corporation believed to be controlled by Mercer.
In the complaint, Matze alleges that Mercer and others plotted to steal Matze’s 40 percent stake in the company, later saying the fair market value for his stake was worth only $3. The “outlandish and arrogant theft” is “the product of a conspiratorial agreement,” the suit says.
Mercer, who backed Donald Trump during his successful 2016 presidential bid, owns the controlling stake in the company, and has now installed her allies to run Parler, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss private matters.
Parler executives, including Meckler and Wernick, did not respond to requests for comment. Mercer and Bongino did not respond to requests for comment. Law firm Pisanelli Bice said in a statement that Matze would not have any further comment.
Matze says in the suit that Parler is being “hijacked” away from being the free expression site he first imagined. The suit alleges that Mercer “sought to co-opt” Parler to encourage her political views.
“It became apparent to Matze that Meckler’s efforts were not to grow Parler as a free expression platform, but instead to redirect it into what Meckler called as the ‘tip of the conservative spear’ for a brand of conservatism in keeping with Mercer’s preferences,” the lawsuit alleges.
Parler grew from a niche social media site to a relatively mainstream option in 2020 when prominent conservative politicians and pundits began joining and promoting the site, many saying they were fed up with so-called “censorship” on Twitter and Facebook. Twitter had started labeling Trump’s tweets with fact checks, and Parler positioned itself as the “free-speech” alternative site.
After the election, Parler’s user base boomed to more than 10 million, bolstered by people seeking alternative social media sites as Trump and his allies spread false narratives about the veracity of the election.
Parler had about 15 million users before it was knocked offline in January, following reports that people had used the site to encourage the attack on the Capitol. Amazon, Apple and Google pulled their technical support for Parler, saying it was not moderating content robustly enough, effectively turning off the lights for the service.
Parler came back online more than a month later with a new cloud computing provider, Los Angeles-based SkySilk. In his suit, Matze claims he was the one who secured the new hosting provider and set up a version of the moderating system Parler is now using.
“However, as Meckler lacked the technical know-how to actually run such a social media platform — and his real role was to simply push a political agenda — the implementation was beyond lacking,” according to the suit.
Matze is seeking an unspecified amount in damages.
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John Matze, a Henderson resident and one of the founders of alternative social media site Parler, is suing the company for wrongful termination after being dismissed from his role as CEO earlier this year.
In a lawsuit filed Monday in Clark County District Court, Matze seeks “millions in compensatory” damages for an “orchestrated theft” of his 40% ownership stake in the Henderson company.
Matze and Jared Thomson co-founded Parler in 2018 as an alternative to Twitter and Facebook, which ban people for certain kinds of extreme or intentionally misleading expression not allowed under their terms of service.
A hotbed of far right activists, Parler went dark after the Jan. 6 deadly attacks on the U.S. Capitol by extremist supporters of then President Donald Trump. The events caused Apple and Google to remove Parler from their app stores and Amazon Web Services to decline hosting the site.
The lawsuit alleges that deplatforming led to Matze’s dismissal by Rebekah Mercer, another co-founder who funded Parler during its launch in 2018. She’s the daughter of Republican billionaire donor Robert Mercer.
The Mercers were also financial backers of Steven Bannon’s activities with Breitbart and Cambridge Analytica as well as early Trump supporters. They are believed to have withdrawn support for both Bannon and Trump in the early years of the Trump administration.
The lawsuit alleges that Matze “was abruptly ousted in violation of the law and public policy for endeavoring to preserve Parler’s commitment to free expression while combating any misuse by violent extremists and domestic terrorists in the wake of the January 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol. Rather than protect Parler, its other owner, Rebekah Mercer, sought to co-opt it as a symbol or as the ‘tip of the spear’ for her brand of conservatism, and plotted to force Matze out as CEO, manager, and member, and steal his forty percent (40%) ownership interest.”
Parler in January said it had more than 12 million users when it was forced offline. Many came to the site after Trump was banned from Twitter for advancing lies about election fraud and encouraging the Capitol insurrection.
The lawsuit estimates the site was worth upwards of a billion dollars, of which Matze no longer has a stake.
“This outlandish and arrogant theft, which occurred in Nevada, is the product of a conspiratorial agreement and actions taken both inside and outside of Nevada, that include intimidating threats and defamatory accusations of misconduct all designed to bully and deprive Matze of his valuable personal property and legal rights,” the suit alleges. “This scheme is epitomized by oppression, fraud and malice, for which Matze is entitled to punitive damages trebling (at a minimum) the millions that he is owed in compensatory damages.”
Matze, through his attorney James Pisanelli, wasn’t available to comment. Matze “looks forward to presenting his claims in court and being vindicated,” the attorney wrote in a statement.
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