Locke Lord LLP issued the following announcement on Dec. 18.
Miki Goodin and Ernesto Palomo, Partners in Locke Lord’s Chicago office, have been selected by Crain’s Chicago Business as 2019 Notable Minorities in Accounting, Consulting and Law honorees. Goodin and Palomo are recognized among a group of distinguished lawyers who have dedicated their careers to advancing the causes of justice and equality as well as mentoring a diverse generation of new lawyers.
Goodin is a member of Locke Lord’s Board of Directors, Intellectual Property Practice Group and Chair of the Firm’s Litigation Support Committee. She is an active mentor both within the Firm and to diverse first-year law students in Chicago through the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD). Goodin is Board Vice President of Ascend Justice, which empowers those impacted by gender-based violence or the child welfare system through legal advocacy and systemic reform. She also lectures through Lawyers in the Classroom of the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago and volunteers with her family through the Honeycomb Project, which engages, mobilizes and inspires kids and their families to build stronger communities by working with various Chicago organizations, including those serving the homeless, families with pediatric patients and veterans.
Goodin focuses her practice on complex intellectual property matters with a primary emphasis on litigation involving the Hatch-Waxman provisions of the Patent Act and the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. In the past year, she has led a number of Paragraph IV Hatch-Waxman patent infringement litigations involving lower-cost generic pharmaceutical products that, when approved by the FDA, could be prescribed to treat depression, diabetes, fungal infections, HIV and cardiovascular disease, among others. She also counsels pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies on patent landscape, freedom to operate, FDA regulatory, patent licensing, commercialization and antitrust issues.
Palomo, Co-Chair of Locke Lord’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee and a member of the Firm’s Business Litigation and Dispute Resolution Practice Group, devotes considerable time to pro bono matters through the National Immigrant Justice Center, Center for Disability and Elder Law and Chicago Volunteer Legal Services. He serves on the Board of The Chicago Committee, Chicago Legal Clinic and Just the Beginning – A Pipeline Organization. He previously served on the Board of the Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois, of which he is an active member, and was a participant in the Fellows Program of LCLD. Earlier this year, the Hispanic National Bar Association recognized Palomo as Latino Attorney of the Year.
In June, Palomo led a team that filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of LatinoJustice PRLDEF and 15 other national Latino organizations opposing the addition of a citizenship question on the 2020 U.S. Census. The brief argued the resulting undercount of the Latino population would cause massive and lasting harm to the Latino community. In its decision in Department of Commerce v. New York, the Court effectively blocked the question from appearing on the Census, ruling the federal government’s justification for including it was a pretext and remanding the case to a lower court. In his practice, Palomo represents large multinational companies in court and commercial arbitration proceedings around the country. He also counsels clients on issues of insurance and reinsurance coverage and has represented domestic and overseas insurers and reinsurers in coverage disputes.
Original source can be found here.