Katherine S. Kayatta
Katherine Kayatta is an experienced litigator with significant trial experience in state and federal courts in Maine and Massachusetts, and focuses her practice on complex commercial litigation and class action defense.
Katherine's litigation practice includes disputes over breaches of contract, unfair trade practices, shareholder rights, and other business-related torts. She also handles cases involving claims for civil conspiracy, breach of fiduciary duty, insurance coverage, and consumer fraud. Katherine has represented foreign and domestic clients from a variety of industries, including financial institutions, utilities, software companies, insurance companies, construction companies, manufacturers of consumer products, and mass transit manufacturers. Katherine has experience overseeing electronic discovery and negotiating litigation protocols for the collection and production of electrically stored information.
Katherine has achieved positive outcomes for clients facing class action lawsuits. Most recently, Katherine successfully defended several energy companies against consumer fraud and unfair trade practices class actions, a building products company against a series of breach of warranty class actions, and a national facility service company in a wage and hour employment class action. She served as trial counsel in the remedy phase of an ERISA class action on behalf of a group life insurance company, a case which was later won on appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
Katherine is a member of the Local Rules Advisory Committee for the federal District of Maine and a member of the Maine State Bar Association and the American Bar Association, having served as co-chair of the ABA Commercial Litigation Committee's Young Lawyers Subcommittee. She also served as co-chair of an ABA working group tasked with presenting recommendations to the Fed. R. Civ. P. 23 Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules at the ABA’s Annual Institute on Class Actions on topics such as professional objectors to class settlements, issue classes, and cy pres awards.
Katherine has partnered with the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project (PAIR) and Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) representing numerous pro bono clients seeking asylum in the United States.
Prior to joining Pierce Atwood, Katherine was a litigation associate with Robinson & Cole LLP in Boston and also served as a judicial intern for Chief Justice Leigh I. Saufley of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.
- Recognized by The Best Lawyers in America® for Commercial Litigation (2022-present)
- Recognized as a "Top-Rated" Business Litigation attorney by Super Lawyers (2021-2022)
- Recognized as a "Rising Star" in Business Litigation by Super Lawyers (2013-2019)
- Local Rules Advisory Committee, United States District Court for the District of Maine
- Advisory Committee on the Maine Rules of Professional Conduct
- Adjunct professor, University of Maine School of Law (Class Actions)
- Former member, University of Maine School of Law Alumni Association Board of Directors
- Maine State Bar Association
- American Bar Association
- Former co-chair, Young Lawyers subcommittee, American Bar Association’s Commercial & Business Litigation Committee
- Co-author, Massachusetts Chapter, in A Practitioner's Guide to Class Actions, Second Edition, ABA Publishing
- “Class Actions 101: Mooting a Putative Class Action after Campbell-Ewald Co v Gomez” - Class Actions & Derivative Suits, American Bar Association Section of Litigation (October 2016)
- Kayatta, Katherine S. "FRCP 45 Proposed Amendments: Changing Subpoena Procedures." Real Estate Litigation (December 13, 2012)
Practice Areas
- Represents building products company in consumer breach of warranty class action
- Obtained summary judgment for insurance company in coverage dispute brought by insured
- Representation of manufacturer in breach of contract claim brought by distributor
- Represented international manufacturer of components for military helicopters in complex trade secret litigation
- Prosecution of a patent infringement action for a major wholesaler/integrated supplier in relation to client's Internet procurement method patent