Mark C. Molumphy

Medical Capital on the Eve of Trial

Medical Capital raised money from approximately ten thousand investors through notes associated with medical-receivables businesses — and became one of the largest Ponzi scheme cases in American history. The investors' strongest remaining path ran through the banks appointed to protect them: Molumphy led claims concerning the contractual duties of the indenture trustees, challenging releases of investor funds from the trust accounts the banks administered.

He defeated summary-judgment efforts and developed the Wells Fargo bank records, transaction chronology, witness testimony, expert analysis, and damages proof for a federal jury trial. After three years of contested litigation, the parties reached a $105 million settlement on the eve of trial. A prior agreement with Bank of New York Mellon contributed another $114 million, bringing the two trustee settlements to $219 million — court-supervised relief for the represented noteholders, and among the largest Ponzi-scheme recoveries in California history.

The Indenture-Trustee Record

The Medical Capital theory focused on the contractual administration of trust accounts and the conduct of the banks appointed to guard the note proceeds. Molumphy connected the offering and indenture documents with the transfers, account controls, trustee communications, and challenged disbursements — turning the paper trail of trust administration into the story of what the gatekeepers permitted.

His team carried the Wells Fargo claims through dispositive motions, evidence development, class coordination, expert work, and final courtroom preparation, keeping bank-specific discovery, damages analysis, and witness preparation aligned through the scheduled trial date. He coordinated class representatives, co-counsel, experts, mediators, and administrators around the trustee-duty theory. The completed record supplied both a jury-ready path and the foundation for the negotiated resolution — the two outcomes were never separate projects.

PG&E, Apple, and Oracle Governance Matters

Molumphy and Frank Pitre represented a derivative plaintiff in the consolidated shareholder litigation arising from the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion — a disaster in the firm's own backyard. Because the claims were derivative, the asserted injury and remedies belonged to PG&E itself, and the record connected board oversight, management conduct, pipeline maintenance, and corporate loss. The settlement paid PG&E $90 million in unrestricted funds and imposed governance measures directed at pipeline safety — one of the largest cash-and-governance derivative resolutions in California history. The court awarded $25 million in attorneys' fees and $500,000 in costs from the settlement, and the California Court of Appeal dismissed a challenge to that allocation because the order was final and nonappealable.

Molumphy also represented shareholder parties in Apple Inc. v. Superior Court, where the published California decision clarified the particularized board-level facts and incorporated documents shareholders may use when pleading that a demand on directors would be futile. The ruling addressed the allocation of corporate litigation authority at the pleading stage — the gateway question of who controls a corporate claim — complementing the settlement and trial-preparation work in his investor cases.

In the Oracle derivative litigation, he persuaded the federal court to invalidate a forum-selection clause inserted into corporate bylaws without shareholder approval — an issue of first impression, and a ruling that kept boards from quietly choosing the courthouse where their own conduct would be judged.

Uber's $200 Million IPO Settlement

The Uber initial-public-offering litigation produced a $200 million settlement that received final federal approval, with Molumphy serving as co-lead counsel in the related state action. He coordinated the offering-document claims through extensive production, depositions, parallel state and federal class and jurisdictional issues, negotiation, and approval — the unglamorous coordination work that determines whether parallel proceedings reinforce or undermine each other. The completed agreement provided a funded recovery for investors who purchased in connection with the offering.

Current Practice

Molumphy is a partner in Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy's Burlingame office, where he heads the firm's securities and privacy practices and handles complex business disputes, antitrust, insurance, corporate governance, consumer, and technology matters in federal and state courts. His current docket runs to the edge of the field, including lead-counsel responsibility in high-profile litigation over market-moving statements by Elon Musk following the Twitter acquisition agreement, and shareholder and consumer matters advancing toward trial.

His civic recognition began early: the Jack Berman Advocacy Center of the American Jewish Congress presented him its Community Service Award for his work on the landmark 101 California Shooting Litigation.

He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, with additional study in international relations and economics at the University of Edinburgh, and his law degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law. His work spans the full arc of investor litigation — investigation, pleading, dispositive motions, discovery, trial preparation, mediation, notice, settlement approval, claims administration, and derivative governance remedies — with each stage built to survive the next.