Mark H. Churchill is a partner in the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP, based in the Firm’s Washington, D.C., office. He is head of the Washington office Trial practice group.
Mark focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation and disputes, and has served as lead trial counsel in federal, state, administrative and arbitration proceedings.
Mark’s capabilities as a general trial practitioner are exemplified by the wide array of complex civil litigation matters he has handled. They include: antitrust, civil fraud, class action defense, contract, employee non-competition covenants, energy, export compliance and control, government contracts, health care fraud (including False Claims Act litigation), intellectual property (including patent infringement, trademark, and copyright), internal investigations, product liability, securities, tax and trade secret.
Most recently, Mark led the successful defense of two prominent firm clients in hotly contested, private arbitration proceedings.
Most prominent among Mark’s trial work have been a number of landmark tax cases concerning the FICA tax exemption for “students,” codified at 26 U.S.C. § 3121(b)(10). Mark first-chaired the victorious defense at trial of an erroneous FICA tax refund suit brought by the United States against Firm client Mount Sinai Medical Center of Florida, Inc. The July 2008 ruling of the district court resulted from only the second trial held on the merits of the FICA student exemption as it pertains to medical residency training programs. Based in major part on Mount Sinai’s victory on the merits, and also on separate defeats of the government by McDermott teaching hospital clients at various federal Courts of Appeal, the Internal Revenue Service announced on March 2, 2010, that it was conceding the applicability of the student exception for timely filed administrative refund claims covering tax quarters prior to the implementation of amended Treasury Regulations (made effective April 1, 2005). At the time, Mark was lead or co-lead counsel on more pending cases involving teaching hospital residency programs than any attorney in the country. In recognition of his advocacy before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where Mark prevailed on behalf of firm clients Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Albany Medical Center, reversing grants of summary judgment for the government, Mark was profiled by the National Law Journal for its 2010 Appellate Hot List.
Following law school, Mark clerked for the Honorable James P. Jones of the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia.
Representative Experience
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Represented individuals and entities in tax shelter litigation.
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Prosecuted and defended civil fraud allegations for a number of Firm clients, including the victorious summary judgment briefs in a federal district court case concerning disputed licenses for spinal implant technology, thereby defeating a claim in excess of forty-three million dollars for fraudulent inducement to contract.
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Assisted the Firm’s Energy Advisory Group representing clients involved in contract disputes, including substantial litigation experience in federal district court, before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and in private arbitration.
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Oversaw the damages case and related expert discovery in patent infringement litigation between Panasonic and Samsung involving plasma panel technology.
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Counsels clients seeking to assess their litigation risk. Among other significant representations, Mark helped conduct the internal investigation of a multi-billion dollar global engineering and manufacturing company following whistleblower allegations of export compliance and control violations.
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Assists the risk arbitrage work done by the Firm’s Antitrust and Competition Practice Group through the assessment of filed and threatened litigation related to pending mergers and acquisitions.
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Maintains a steady presence in the Firm’s pro bono work. Among other matters, Mark helped litigate a prisoner’s Civil Rights Act claim against Illinois State prison employees; tried a child custody and abuse and neglect case in D.C. Superior Court, Family Division; litigated an appeal from the Merit Systems Protection Board to the United States District Court for the District of Maryland concerning alleged violations by the United States government of the Rehabilitation Act and the Family Medical Leave Act; and drafted the amicus curiae brief for the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center in Lawson v. Maryland, focusing on the State’s evidentiary rules governing statements of rape by child victims of sexual assault and abuse. Most recently, Mark served as trial counsel for a father and helped obtain custody of the man’s seven-year-old son following a four-day custody hearing in D.C. Superior Court, Family Division.
Education
- University of Virginia School of Law, J.D.
- Duke University, A.B.
