Contact
drice@hosielaw.com

Recognition and Affiliations 

Selected as one of America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators®

“AV Preeminent” Rating, Martindale-Hubbell Judical Edition and Peer Review

2024 AV Preeminent Attorney

America’s Most Honored Lawyers

Northern California Super Lawyer, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

Lawyers of Distinction

Top Women Attorneys in California

White Scholar of the White Center for Law & Public Policy

Member Notre Dame Law School Advisory Council

Member, Board of Directors, Human Rights Watch, S.F. Committee

President, Barristers Club of San Francisco

Bar Admissions

State of California

State of Connecticut

State of Florida

Education

Notre Dame Law School, J.D., cum laude

University of Notre Dame, B.A., cum laude

Diane Rice is a trial lawyer who has had more than 25 years of complex litigation experience trying cases throughout the United States. Her practice focuses on difficult and high-profile lawsuits, including commercial disputes, intellectual property cases, mass torts and class actions. The skill and insight that she brings to cases is based on her broad experience representing plaintiffs and defendants, individuals and Fortune 500 corporations, as well as startup and mature companies. Diane’s clients include technology companies, cryptocurrency companies, manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and medical device companies. Most recently, she has represented technology companies in lawsuits against Google, eBay, Cisco, Facebook and Amazon.

Diane joined the San Francisco law firm of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, where she was a partner from 1991 to 2003. Starting in 2001, she led Brobeck’s Products Liability & Life Sciences Group. Upon the dissolution of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, she joined Hosie Rice LLP. Her court experience includes over one hundred weeks of jury trials in 15 states and she has settled thousands of cases.

Diane has been a member of the national trial team for Baxter Healthcare Corporation and Mentor Corporation. She oversaw a pharmaceutical and device litigation for Novartis and Ciba-Geigy Corporations. She has managed a national experts’ team for American Home Products. For fifteen years, she represented Fibreboard Corporation, Owens Corning Fiberglas, and Pittsburgh Corning Corporation and litigated two of the largest class action trials in the country on their behalf. Diane is a co-lead class action counsel in the In Re Literary Works in Electronic Databases Copyright Litigation, representing freelance authors who had their works published on Internet databases and publications without their permission.

Diane has also litigated several significant pro bono cases. She represented a child who was severely brain damaged as a result of strangulation in a crib and received a $38 million structured settlement during trial. In another pro bono matter, she obtained a significant multimillion dollar cash settlement on behalf of a star athlete teenage boy who suffered permanent brain damage from a tennis racket blow to the head. For her pro bono service, she received one of Brobeck’s highest recognitions, “The Whit Bridge Community Services Award.”

Diane has been a faculty member for trial advocacy programs at Stanford, Harvard, Notre Dame and the University of San Francisco law schools, as well as a speaker for California Continuing Education of the Bar courses in Trial Skills, Deposition Skills, and Trial Advocacy. She serves as a visiting faculty member of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy. She is often a featured speaker at industry conferences such as Mealey's and the Defense Research Institute Conference.