Christopher H. Lunding is a senior counsel, based in the New York office.
Mr. Lunding’s practice currently focuses on litigation involving the rights of Native American tribes. In his long career as a partner in the firm, he principally handled complex corporate litigation matters, including product liability litigation defense, appellate litigation, securities fraud litigation and international arbitration. To cite one example, Mr. Lunding was defense trial counsel in a nine-week product liability jury trial for a Japanese company in state court in Los Angeles, California, which resulted in a defense verdict on all counts. Most recently, he was lead trial counsel for the Shinnecock Indian Nation in a 30-day federal bench trial in the Eastern District of New York and in a subsequent appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in which a judgment and injunction against Mr. Lunding’s client were vacated.
Mr. Lunding joined the firm in 1973 and became a partner in 1980 and a senior counsel in 2005. He was resident as senior partner in the firm’s Tokyo office from 1996 to 2000. Mr. Lunding received a J.D degree from Yale Law School in 1971 and an undergraduate degree,
magna cum laude, from Harvard College in 1968. Immediately prior to joining Cleary Gottlieb, Mr. Lunding was a law clerk to the Honorable Walter R. Mansfield of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Mr. Lunding is a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. His biography appears in
Who’s Who in the World and
Who’s Who in America, and he has authored articles in legal publications as various as the
Yale Law Journal and the
Journal of Multistate Taxation. He is a member in good standing of the Bar of the State of New York. He also is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States (before which, in 1998, he argued and won a major constitutional litigation), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for the Ninth Circuit, and the U.S. District Court for the Southern, Eastern, and Western Districts of New York and for the Southern District of Texas.