David F. Jurca  
phone (206) 689-2140
djurca@helsell.com

AREAS OF PRACTICE
• Commercial Disputes and Class Actions
• Public Interest and Civil Rights
• Trials and Appeals

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Dave has litigated a wide variety of business disputes in courts across the country, and has chaired Helsell Fetterman’s general litigation department for many years. He has represented parties in litigation involving claims over construction, environmental, employment, antitrust, franchise, dealer termination, distributorship, unfair competition, breach of contract, securities, warranty, usury, insurance coverage, fraud, product liability, commercial defamation, tax, municipal finance, corporate governance, partnership and other complex business or commercial disputes. For example:

Dave led a team of Helsell attorneys in a number of class actions on behalf of utility ratepayers challenging financial and accounting practices of the City of Seattle, Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities. One of these challenges was to the City’s decision to shift the cost of public street lighting from the City’s general fund to utility ratepayers. Following a successful appeal to the Washington Supreme Court, the ratepayers won a $25 million judgment against the City, resulting in substantial refunds to hundreds of thousands of present and former City Light ratepayers. Other claims involved challenges to utility funding for fire hydrants, for reducing third parties’ greenhouse gas emissions, and for various other city services.

In federal court in Washington and Arizona, Dave was lead counsel for 18 Pacific Northwest electric utilities, and related parties, in more than twenty consolidated nationwide class actions known as In re Washington Public Power Supply System Securities Litigation, widely regarded as one of the largest, most complex securities fraud cases in U.S. history.

Dave has litigated multimillion dollar officers and directors liability insurance coverage disputes in federal courts in Kansas, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Oregon; construction and airplane crash cases in Alaska; and claims over defective shipyard cranes in Mississippi.

Dave is experienced in methods of alternative dispute resolution and has served as arbitrator, mediator and special master.

EDUCATION AND BACKGROUND
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
(A.B., Mathematics, 1967)
Columbia University, New York, New York (J.D. 1970)

Dave was born in Gary, Indiana in 1946. His family moved to a small farm in northwest Indiana in 1956. Following his 1963 graduation from Portage High School in Portage, Indiana, he attended college at Harvard and law school at Columbia. While in law school he became an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. Dave was with the Wall Street law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in New York before joining Helsell Fetterman in 1974. He has been a partner in Helsell Fetterman since 1978.

ADMITTED TO PRACTICE
New York, 1971
Washington, 1974

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