Thomas Brown

Partner

Tom Brown is a partner in O’Melveny’s San Francisco office and a member of the Financial Services Practice.  Tom’s practice focuses on competition law and legal issues affecting the financial services industry.

Tom has been litigating cases, including class actions, in the financial services industry for more than a decade.  He was a member of the trial team that handled the defense of the then largest civil antitrust class action in U.S. history for Visa U.S.A. Inc., In re Visa Check/MasterMoney Antitrust Litigation.  He has helped numerous other financial services companies, including Capital One and PayPal, defend against class actions, including an ongoing case challenging the use of PayPal in the eBay marketplace.

Immediately prior to joining O’Melveny, Tom was Vice President, Senior Counsel at Visa U.S.A. Inc.  There he was responsible for managing the aftermath of the settlement in In re Visa Check/MasterMoney Antitrust Litigation, including the dozens of consumer class actions that were filed following the settlement.  He was also deeply involved in the company’s still ongoing transformation from a co-op to a shareholder owned company.

Tom is a recognized authority on consumer payments and antitrust law.  He is currently teaching a course at Boalt Hall on The Law and Policy of Modern Consumer Payments. His piece Keeping Electronic Money Valuable: The Future of Payments and the Role of Public Authorities was recently included as a chapter in the book Moving Money, edited by Robert E. Litan and Martin Neil Baily.  Earlier this year, he co-authored an article, Credit Where Credit Is Due, on the Credit Card Accountability and Disclosure Act of 2009.  Tom is frequently quoted in American Banker, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications.

Professional Activities

Law Clerk, Honorable Diane P. Wood, U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit 

Admitted to Practice, U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh and Ninth Circuits; U.S. Supreme Court 

Professor, Adjunct Professor at Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley, in the Law and Policy of Modern Consumer Payments

Author, Keeping Electronic Money Valuable: The Future of Payments and the Role of Public Authorities (2009); “linkLine v. SBC: Back to the Future?” GCP, The Online Magazine For Global Competition Review (January 2008)

Co-Author, with Lacey Plache, “Credit Where Credit Is Due,” Lombard Street, Vol. 1, No. 6 (June 21, 2009); with Whitney E. McCollum, "Antitrust and the Real Estate Industry: Looking Backwards and Forwards" (GCP, July 2008), with Professor Richard Epstein, "Cybersecurity in the Payment Card Industry," 75 U. Chi. L. Rev. 203 (2008), with Christine Wilson, “Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly: A tectonic shift in pleading standards (Or just a tremor)?” Washington Legal Foundation (August 24, 2007); “The War on Plastic,” Regulation, Vol.29, No.3, pp. 12-16, Fall 2006, with Richard Epstein”; “Paying With Plastic: Maybe, Not So Crazy,” 73 U. Chi. L. Rev. 63 (2006), with Lacey Plache; “Production and Distribution—The Special Problem of Joint Ventures,” 1355 PLI/Corp 163 (2004), with Stephen V. Bomse; Antitrust and Intellectual Property Licenses, 12 Computer and Internet Law 18 (2001), with Dale Rice; “Altered States: Electronic Commerce and Owning the Means of Value Exchange,” 1999 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 2, with Robert D. Fram and Margaret Jane Radin

Editorial Board, ABA’s Antitrust Law Developments (Seventh)

Member, American Bar Association, The American Law Institute