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Other
Attorney Profiles
John
R. Olsen
James W. Olsen
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| Diane MacArthur Brown |
Diane MacArthur Brown has been in-house counsel for large
corporations, assistant district attorney for many years in
Manhattan, deputy attorney general in Colorado, and most recently
trial attorney at Olsen & Brown L.L.C. She graduated from
the Detroit College of Law in 1977, ninth in a class of 265,
was selected for law journal and won the school’s criminal
law award. She went to work as in-house counsel at Centel Corporation
and later Citicorp. In March 1981, she joined the staff of
New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and worked as
an assistant district attorney in Manhattan.
During a prosecutorial career in Manhattan that spanned more
than six years, Ms. Brown worked in the Office of the Special
Narcotics Prosecutor (an arm of all five boroughs) prosecuting
narcotics offenses including multi-national conspiracies. She
also was assigned to the Rackets Bureau, which investigated
and prosecuted organized crimes. Ms. Brown was a courtroom
deputy in Manhattan with special expertise in wiretaps, narcotics
offenses, and organized crime. She worked in conjunction with
DEA, FBI, and international law enforcement agencies, until
she moved to Colorado in June 1987. Thereafter, she became
a deputy attorney general in the Superfund enforcement section
of the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, and then joined
Olsen & Brown L.L.C. as a trial attorney and founding partner.
Ms. Brown was born October 31, 1950 in Chicago, is presently
54 years old, and has been practicing law for 27 years. She
graduated from Michigan State University in 1973 with a bachelor
of arts degree. Her corporate legal experience included a broad
range of issues and cases, including discrimination and governmental
regulation matters. Her prosecutorial experience included daily
work with grand juries, undercover investigations, wiretaps,
and international authorities. Investigations and indictments
included multi-national, multi-language intercepted communications,
search warrants, and prosecutions. She worked with grand juries
on certain crimes in Manhattan, including the December 1985 “Sparks
Steakhouse” hit murders of Paul “Big Paulie” Castellano
and his driver, Thomas Billotti, in which their assassins blocked
off a section of East Forty-Sixth Street during the Christmas
shopping rush. Castellano was the head of the Gambino Crime
Family, and the ensuing grand jury investigation implicated
John Gotti.
As a trial attorney and former prosecutor, Ms. Brown has espoused
the view that litigation can be a truth-seeking function and
a means toward applied justice in society, whether that justice
is being sought by individuals or corporations. Jurors see
things that judges miss, and juries bring a commonsense intelligence
that will discern the truth in any fact pattern if the lawyers
have the appropriate skills and are doing their jobs.
Ms. Brown’s trial skills emphasize cross-examination
techniques and closings. Her investigative skills emphasize
unearthing evidence that is hard to find and witnesses who
are reluctant to get involved. She discerns trends and patterns
in complex evidentiary matters. She is a particular critic
of government bureaucracy and regulation that hampers entrepreneurial
enterprise and success. Her advice to corporations and their
executives has been important to their accomplishments, in
litigation and otherwise.
Ms. Brown was licensed in Illinois in 1977, in New York in
1981, and in Colorado in 1987. She maintains her license to
practice law in all three jurisdictions, and is admitted to
practice before many courts, including the United States Supreme
Court. Ms. Brown is a persuasive litigator with an intensive
background in trial strategies and skills. Courtesy is a hallmark
of her personal style and professional practice.
Ms. Brown’s work has resulted in or contributed to difficult
civil settlements, arbitration awards, and multi-million dollar
jury verdicts, including a $10.3 million verdict in the United
States District Court for the District of Colorado and a $2.58
million verdict in the United States District Court for the
Southern District of New York (Manhattan). She is also known
for her work in charitable organizations, is a clothing designer
and has owned her own clothing company in the United States.
She has attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New
York, the University of Colorado, and Colorado State University.
She has studied French and Italian, traveling extensively abroad
on legal, personal and business matters. She has a daughter,
Jane, who is in the fifth grade.
Ms. Brown is a founding partner of Olsen & Brown L.L.C.
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