Karl R. Barnickol

Karl R. Barnickol is a partner in the Chicago office who focuses his practice on major class action and complex litigation, with an emphasis on securities, shareholder derivative liability, antitrust and consumer class actions.

Mr. Barnickol has had a consistent record of successes in state and federal courts, at both the trial and appellate levels, throughout the United States. He has represented companies such as Career Education Corporation, Wolters Kluwer, UBS AG, Nestlé S.A., Deutsche Bahn AG, and Fruit of the Loom, Inc. and their individual officers and directors in complex civil litigation. He also has represented companies and senior managers in connection with regulatory and criminal investigations into alleged securities fraud, price fixing and healthcare fraud.

Mr. Barnickol’s trial and appellate experience includes obtaining dismissal of three amended securities fraud complaints and four parallel derivative complaints filed against a company and its senior executives. He also successfully negotiated a class action settlement in a $1.6 billion healthcare fraud class action and defended the settlement against objections from class members in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He obtained a favorable allocation of costs on behalf of an oil company facing environmental claims following a four-week bench trial.

He is an active member of the firm’s Recruiting Committee and served as chairman of the firm’s summer associate program in 2006 and 2007.

For the past three years, Mr. Barnickol has been listed in Illinois Super Lawyers as a Rising Star and in Benchmark Litigation as a Future Star. He is also listed in the 2012 edition of The Best Lawyers of America.

Mr. Barnickol received his A.B. in Political Science from Georgetown University in 1994, and he received his Juris Doctor degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1997. He is a member of the Order of the Coif and a former member of Washington University Law Review.