Dov Fischer
Rabbi Dov Fischer, Esq., a high-stakes litigation attorney of more than twenty-five years and an adjunct professor of law of more than fifteen years, is rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California. His legal career has included serving as Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, clerking for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and then litigating at three of America’s most prominent law firms: JonesDay, Akin Gump, and Baker & Hostetler. Through the years, he has practiced both in the United States federal courts and in the state courts on a broad range of case matters, gaining expertise in virtually every subject area of complex civil litigation including labor and employment law, securities litigation, federal government contracts litigation, bankruptcy law, ERISA law, Hague Service Convention and Hague Evidence Convention practice, professional malpractice law, entertainment litigation, federal and state fair-credit-reporting requirements, the filed-rate doctrine as it affects carriers on land and rails, insurance bad faith, cybersquatting, commercial lessors’ rights, international contracts, fair-housing litigation, the law of computer role-playing games, federal and state antitrust matters, director and officer liability, defamation and false-light litigation, unfair-business-practices law, and the fuller gamut of advanced torts and classic breach-of-contract case matters. He also has practiced appellate law successfully, authoring the winning brief in Bierbower v. FHP, Inc., 70 Cal. App. 4th 1, 82 Cal. Rptr. 2d 393 (1999). His UCLA Law Review analysis of director-and-officer liability issues in depository institutions has been cited in a broad range of federal district court and appellate circuit opinions.
Among his major complex litigation representations, Rabbi Fischer represented Philip Morris during the California tobacco litigation, overseeing their massive document production effort; and the accounting firm of KPMG Peat Marwick during the Orange County bankruptcy litigation. In addition to representing such other major corporate clients as Samsung, Hughes Aircraft, Experian, KPMG Peat Marwick, Albertson’s Stores, Embassy Suites, Spencer Gifts, Cardinal Health, BOC Gases, IHI Danmark, Wet Seal, Bioware (“Baldur’s Gate”), and Occidental Petroleum, Rabbi Fischer also has devoted substantial pro bono efforts unique to his background, working to prevent unwarranted autopsies, inducing recalcitrant spouses to grant Gett-based Jewish divorces, representing communal rabbinic leaders sued for advocating unpopular but courageous positions, and participating in representing the successful plaintiffs’ class in the nationwide class-action lawsuit brought against European insurance companies by surviving families of Holocaust victims. He also disappointed his then-young son when he successfully represented a client named Stan Lee in a cybersquatting defense against an eponymous plaintiff whose colorful literary output his son admired.
In his rabbinical career, Rabbi Fischer has served three terms on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America, is Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Coalition for Jewish Values, has been Vice President of Zionist Organization of America, and has served on boards of Jewish Federations in New Jersey and in Los Angeles, on boards of the American Jewish Committee, B’nai Brith Hillel, and several others. Earlier in his career, he was national director of American Friends of Likud / Herut Zionists of America, and he participated with 35 other once-young families in founding, building, and living a year in a then-new American community in Ginot Shomron, Israel (referred to by Israel’s opponents as a “West Bank settlement”).
His writings on contemporary political issues have been appearing nationally for forty years, dating back to his undergraduate years at Columbia University, where he amazingly was elected to represent the college student body in the University Senate. Those writings have appeared over the years in publications including but not limited to the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Jerusalem Post, National Review, American Greatness, American Thinker, The Weekly Standard, Frontpage Magazine, American Thinker, Jewish World Review, Israel National News / Arutz Sheva, and in other Jewish newsmedia in American and in Israel. He also is the author of two books, including General Sharon’s War Against Time Magazine, which covered the Israeli General’s 1980s landmark libel suit.
Among his proudest honors, Brooklyn-born Rabbi Fischer has been named an “Honorary Kentucky Colonel” by four different Governors of that Commonwealth recognizing his service to and passionate love of that state, has been honored by law students for faculty recognition, has received national awards and recognition for his academic and scholarly writings, and is a winner of an American Jurisprudence Award in Professional Legal Ethics.