Douglas E. Mirell

Partner
Fax 310-201-4447

Representative Matters

  • Counsel for Terry Bollea (professionally known as Hulk Hogan) in pre-trial depositions that helped secure a $140.1 million jury verdict in an invasion of privacy lawsuit against Gawker Media, its founder/CEO Nick Denton, and former Gawker.com Editor-in-Chief A.J. Daulerio
  • Sought and obtained the extraordinary retraction of an entire 6,500-word article that appeared in The Atlantic because it breached repeated promises of anonymity; the author manipulated and lied to her sources, while also deceiving the magazine by seriously falsifying and egregiously distorting various aspects of the personal family lives of those sources. This retraction was accompanied by an 800-word editor's note that apologized to readers and explained some of the story's significant errors and fabrications
  • Lead counsel for Bishop Charles E. Blake, Sr., the Presiding Bishop of the Church Of God In Christ, in a federal court defamation lawsuit that resulted in the entry of a permanent injunction, the removal of dozens of wholly false and highly inflammatory YouTube videos, the incarceration of the defendant responsible for creating and posting those videos upon a finding of civil contempt of court, and a referral of that defendant to the United States Attorney’s Office for a potential criminal contempt prosecution
  • Counsel in a two-year trial of the then-largest shareholder/dissenter’s rights case in American legal history involving a privately-held real estate corporation
  • Successfully defended The Franklin Mint in a publicity rights, false advertising, and false endorsement case brought by the memorial fund and estate of the late Princess Diana
  • Counsel for world-famous paranormal researcher and author Zak Bagans – host of the Travel Channel’s #1-rated Ghost Adventures reality television series and owner of The Haunted Museum in Las Vegas – in a dispute with Ranker.com and its associated Graveyard Shift Facebook site (@rankergraveyardshift) that resulted in the permanent deletion of a negative and inaccurate article and the issuance of a public apology to Mr. Bagans
  • Successfully defended a book author/publisher and a television producer/network against a lawsuit filed by Elizabeth Taylor which sought to prevent the publication of an unauthorized biography and the airing of an unauthorized television mini-series on her life
  • Successfully defended the author of a book about the Scott Peterson murder trial against an attempt by Peterson and his lawyers to censor its contents
  • Regularly obtains retractions of defamatory statements in both traditional print media and online postings
  • Successfully represented various criminal defense attorneys and their clients in challenging court-imposed gag orders
  • Co-counsel in the successful constitutional challenge to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors’ 1981 redistricting plan on the grounds that it intentionally discriminated against the county’s then-3 million Latino residents, resulting in the election of a Latina – the first woman ever elected to the Board and the first Hispanic to serve on that powerful body in 115 years
  • Co-counsel for immigrant plaintiffs in the federal court lawsuit that successfully halted implementation of California’s Proposition 187
  • Co-counsel for Hispanic plaintiffs in a successful challenge to the at-large election system in the Compton Unified School District that resulted in the adoption of a district-based election system, a requirement that those elections occur concurrent with statewide primary elections rather than in odd-numbered years when voter turnout is substantially lower, and the advancement of the date of the first such election from November 2022 to March 2020