A private airline in Nairobi, Kenya, becomes involved in a local civil business litigation that threatens its very existence.  This airline has major contracts with the UN and various NGOs to fly into some of the most difficult places in Africa, including Somalia and Sudan.  Its operators previously flew into places like Kosovo and Kabul, including being the last plane on the ground in Kabul as the Taliban entered the city.  We are hired to provide research into the background of the plaintiffs, who clearly have a substantial yet vague US existence.  Our research ultimately takes us to Kenya, where we also testify in court to deliver the important evidence we have collected. 

DB&A is one of the leading investigative firms in the nation specializing in product liability defense.  DB&A staff has had extensive involvement, often 2000 hours or more per case, on litigation teams representing leading defendants in cases involving breast implants, cosmetics, Rezulin, Fen-phen, asbestos, lead paint, tobacco, DES, Paxil, Lotronex, Epivir/Retrovir, and Bendectin. 

The alleged owner of a non-trademarked name for prepaid phone cards selling to the So Cal Hispanic community sues another commercial user of that same name, claiming that this other use is both unauthorized and has confused and damaged their calling card market.  We conduct an extensive market research survey in dozens of Hispanic commercial neighborhoods in Southern California to document alleged use of the mark, and to determine consumer awareness of the mark and secondary meaning.

In an investigation which became a major Los Angeles Times story by Myron Levin, DB&A assisted a large commercial landlord who entered binding arbitration with a new tenant only to lose over $400,000 on what was thought to be a minor dispute. Investigation revealed other instances where landlords to a group of related tenants had also faced the same arbitration entity with similar results. DB&A investigated hidden links between the arbitration entity and the various connected tenants which created conflict of interest, if not fraud.

The largest landowner in Hong Kong, New World TMT, invested $820 million in Prediwave, a Silicon Valley firm, in order to bring a new interactive cable technology to mainland China.  After a number of years of development, fears arose that both this technology and the investment partner needed further scrutiny.  We were brought in to identify and interview ex-employees and to identify and track assets as part of this analysis.  Ultimately, a judgment of $2.8 billion was won and we assisted on a worldwide hunt for attachable assets.

In the Lynn Boyd Stites Alliance, one of the largest insurance frauds in California history, DB&A was responsible for putting together a database that tracked hundreds of involved persons and entities and fraudulently filed lawsuits, using the sorted data to assemble evidence of the fraud and track assets. Staffers also assisted in the Joseph David Dominelli currency trading scandal out of La Jolla, one of the largest Ponzi schemes in California history, in part by tracing hundreds of fictitious business names used to hide assets.

DB&A played a leading role in the defense investigation arising out of the catastrophic and deadly failure of a hot-reheat steam pipe at the Mohave Generating Station. Experts were found in such areas as creep fracture mechanics, finite element analysis and power plant operations, and hundreds of workers were located, interviewed and sorted in order to defend the failed pipe, manufactured twenty years previously. This whole effort took nearly three years.

Douglas Baldwin spent almost two years working on the massive MGM Grand Hotel fire on behalf of the major defendant. Every guest and employee was identified and tracked, and all those with any potential for having witness evidence as to the fire causation and spread were interviewed and their data organized in a computer database. Every possible piece of data was collected and organized, and all the original materials installed into the key fire areas had to be identified and reobtained for fire testing.

DB&A has had a major part in the investigation of environmental cases such as Aerojet and Stringfellow, and has worked closely with clients with ongoing environmental defense needs such as Arco. When underground oil tanks were discovered by surprise during the building of the new Los Angeles Convention Center, the firm had to identify, via witnesses or documentation, the history of land ownership of the many interlocking parcels in the redevelopment package, and determine the business usage for each. DB&A also had important roles in the Stealth Bomber materials employee environment pollution litigation and the derailment of Southern Pacific freight train and the resulting explosion of a rocket fuel pipeline.

In the lead paint litigation, mainly centered on the east coast, for major defendant ARCO, DB&A put together a detailed history of the use, manufacture and distribution of lead based commercial paint on the east coast. For the part of the litigation centered in New York City, DB&A did substantial work to assist in a project to find all those in a position of government responsibility covering the use of lead paint in housing projects and other public locations some thirty years previously.

In a suit brought by employee pharmacists against LA County and numerous drug companies, DB&A was hired by the large coordinated defense team with over two dozen attorneys representing from all drug companies that may have provided anti-neoplastic products, sued as allegedly the potential cause of a rare leukemia contracted by the plaintiff pharmacists.