Chad Fitzgerald specializes in entertainment and business litigation as well as transactional matters for entertainment industry clients. He has represented actors, producers, writers, showrunners, musicians, professional athletes, production and distribution companies, clients in the fitness, apparel, toy, and gem industries, the guilds, personal and business managers, and talent agents and agencies. Mr. Fitzgerald handles disputes in the areas of contract, profit participation and “vertical integration,” financing, distribution, copyright, trademark, trade secrets, partnership, franchise, fraud, rights of privacy, and defamation. He also negotiates and drafts agreements for intellectual property rights holders, entertainment industry executives, writers, producers, independent filmmakers, and unscripted programming creators, among others.
Mr. Fitzgerald has been named a Super Lawyer “Rising Star” in Los Angeles magazine in 2008, 2012, and 2013. He was part of a KWIKA trial team that obtained one of the Daily Journal’s Top 10 Defense Verdicts in 2007 and was also part of a KWIKA trial team that obtained a complete defense verdict for Mattel, Inc. in a month-long jury trial regarding a contract dispute in 2011. He has written numerous articles on legal issues in the entertainment industry, has appeared on several panels discussing entertainment litigation, and has discussed legal issues in entertainment for media outlets such as The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, E! Online, the Daily Journal, and KPCC’s “Air Talk” radio show.
Prior to joining KWIKA in 2007, Chad worked in the Business and Legal Affairs department of Universal Pictures, negotiating and drafting agreements to acquire intellectual property rights for Universal and engaging talent to render services on Universal films. While at Universal, he also handled above- and below-the-line agreements for films in production and oversaw all of Universal’s agreements with visual and special effects companies.
Chad was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada and is a graduate of Yale University (B.A. with distinction in English, 1998) and the UCLA School of Law (J.D., 2001). While at UCLA, he externed for the Honorable J. Spencer Letts of the U.S. District Court, Central District of California and volunteered for AIDS Project Los Angeles. He is a past president of the congregation council of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Santa Monica, and he currently serves on the board of directors of weSPARK Cancer Support Center in Sherman Oaks. He lives in Westlake Village with his wife and twin sons.
