Mr. Thomas is a partner at Smith | Campbell | Clifford | Kearney | Gore, and manages the firm's Scottsdale, Arizona office. Mr. Thomas's practice focuses on complex business litigation and trials, including investment fraud, corporate dissolution, and intellectual property litigation. Mr. Thomas is lead counsel for more than 70 plaintiffs in a large investment fraud case against the professionals of the former Mortgages Limited in Arizona, with alleged damages of over $130,000,000. Mr. Thomas is also lead counsel in a significant copyright infringement/trade secret misappropriation case on behalf of the largest CFO business in the country. Mr. Thomas also served as the CEO of Delta Dental Plan of Arizona, Inc., the largest indemnity dental insurer in Arizona. As a result of that experience, Mr. Thomas is able to offer clients unique legal guidance on diverse strategic, formation, and operational issues for businesses, be they sole proprietorships, partnerships, corporations, or limited liability companies.
Throughout his career, Mr. Thomas has successfully protected and vindicated the rights of small- to medium-sized business owners in a wide variety of business disputes, often against larger competitors. For example, Mr. Thomas obtained a substantial verdict for a well-known Atlanta pain physician against a major Atlanta hospital for wrongfully interfering with the doctor's medical practice. After lengthy litigation, Mr. Thomas achieved a multimillion dollar settlement against a major Wall Street investment firm for having misappropriated his client's trade secrets. Mr. Thomas obtained a defense verdict for a small business owner in a multimillion dollar claim brought by a disgruntled minority shareholder of a dissolved corporation. Mr. Thomas obtained a verdict for buyers of a high-end Scottsdale home for specific performance, to force the seller to live up to his promise to sell. Mr. Thomas successfully defeated the efforts of a national company to enforce an unreasonable restrictive covenant not to compete against an entrepreneur with a growing competing business. Mr. Thomas has successfully represented bankruptcy trustees in significant cases against lawyers, accountants, and other professionals arising out of failed businesses and investments. He was instrumental in making new law in the Ninth Circuit regarding the rights of liquidating trustees in bankruptcy. Through these and other successes throughout his career, Mr. Thomas has demonstrated a commitment to his personal slogan: “Clients want solutions, not more problems.”
Mr. Thomas graduated from Brigham Young University in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. He received his law degree, cum laude, from Washington & Lee University Law School in 1983. At Washington & Lee, Mr. Thomas was the captain of the National Moot Court team and received the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence. Since that time, Mr. Thomas has practiced in Atlanta, Georgia and the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area. He is a member of the bar in both Georgia and Arizona. Mr. Thomas is fluent in Portuguese. Mr. Thomas holds an AV rating from Martindale-Hubbell.