David Rownd

David Rownd is an experienced business litigator with a long track record of successful results, who helps clients resolve complex commercial disputes strategically and efficiently.

As a shareholder in Vedder’s New York and Chicago offices, he maintains a nationwide litigation practice representing companies, executives, business owners, and entrepreneurs across industries such as real estate, wireless infrastructure, marketing, automotive, shipping, and insurance. Clients rely on him as both a litigator and trusted advisor who understands their business priorities and long-term objectives.

Dave regularly handles high-stakes business disputes involving contractual, statutory, and common law claims in state and federal courts, and alternative dispute resolution forums. He has extensive experience with matters involving property rights and asset portfolios, particularly leases and easements for cell towers and billboards. His practice also includes broker commission disputes, partnership, LLC and shareholder disputes—including control fights, squeeze-outs, and valuation issues—as well as prosecuting and defending emergency motions for injunctive relief.

Known for approaching disputes from a business-first perspective, Dave identifies key leverage points early and designs strategies that position clients for strong outcomes. Clients frequently describe him as strategic, practical, and highly effective, with a talent for cross-examination and for getting adversaries to see a case from his client’s perspective. He is also known for creative problem solving and solutions tailored to a client’s risk tolerance and commercial goals.

With more than 30 years of experience, Dave understands the industries in which his clients operate and uses his deep knowledge of the relationships, contracts, and challenges that drive those sectors to obtain the results his clients seek in litigation and arbitration matters. Beyond litigation, he often acts as a legal concierge for clients by coordinating support across related areas such as real estate transactions, business deals, and estate planning. This holistic, business-minded approach allows him to consistently exceed client expectations while remaining mindful of budget and operational impact.

Experience

• Led a team of attorneys that prevailed in consolidated arbitrations before the Society of Maritime Arbitrators in New York, wherein Claimants Shipbrokers challenged the sale of a vessel as a sham transaction and asserted entitlement to a sale commission and ongoing charter hire (leasing) commissions totaling over $6 million. Dave and his team achieved a complete victory for the seller of the vessel, including an award of all attorneys’ fees and costs incurred in the arbitrations.
• Successfully defeated a motion for preliminary injunction that, if granted, would have stripped a real estate developer of critical leverage in a large conversion project and exposed them losing the project and approximately $87M in personal guaranty liability.
• Successfully defeated a motion for preliminary injunction that, if granted, would have wiped out the client’s security interest in LLC interests, which had been pledged to secure millions of dollars in loans.
• Obtained dismissal of numerous claims asserted by a building owner against the operator of a rooftop communications site, including attempts to pierce the corporate veil and impose liability on a publicly traded corporate parent.
• Obtained summary judgment ruling that a revenue share contract was not assumed by an acquirer of a portfolio of cell tower sites, eliminating revenue share liability at that site on a going forward basis
• Led a team of attorneys from multiple law firms in federal court litigation and five related state court actions relating to efforts to control land rights at more than 600 cell tower sites. The case involved antitrust, RICO and Lanham Act claims as well as common law fraud, tortious interference and contract claims, over 10 million pages of documents, 100 depositions and 23 identified expert witnesses. Removed six of the opponent's eight claims through summary judgment motions and settled the case favorably after winning Daubert motions that excluded the opponent's primary damages theory and its liability expert on surviving claims.
• Obtained summary judgment that a purchaser of an easement under a cell tower did not conspire to defraud a fee simple purchaser of its alleged right to receive rent payments from the cell tower operator.
• Obtained summary judgment that a purchaser of an easement under a billboard did not tortiously interfere with a subsequent fee simple purchaser’s alleged expectation to acquire a property without the encumbrance of the billboard.
• Obtained summary judgment on behalf of a buyer of a business on fraud, breach of contract and duress claims filed by the seller, in which the seller claimed the buyer purchased the business for the purpose of eliminating a competitor and failed to use good-faith efforts to generate expected royalties.
• Negotiated a settlement between a Chicago art collector and the heir of a painting's original owner in a highly publicized case featured in the ABA Journal article, "Art Attack.” The client was embroiled in a controversy over a Picasso painting alleged to have been looted by the Nazis during World War II. After several key procedural victories and the development of a superior claim of ownership under French law, the case was settled.