Cadio Zirpoli has built his career on tenacity and the ability to bring numerous high-profile cases to positive results for his clients.
Cadio’s passion for justice stems from an early post-law school position at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, where he distinguished himself by working under a federal grant to successfully prosecute repeat offenders of domestic violence, elder abuse, and child abuse. Working for victims suffering from these and other offenses made him commit to working for plaintiffs’ firms in which he could more directly advocate for victims’ rights and obtain compensation on their behalf.
Due to his family background and education, Cadio has a particular focus and passion for representing the rights of artists, musicians, and authors, as evidenced by his key role in developing and coordinating the firm’s generative artificial intelligence litigation. These novel, cutting-edge cases are on behalf of classes of artists, coders, and authors who allege their creative work is being illegally appropriated by defendants’ artificial intelligence and machine learning technology without consent, credit, compensation, or transparency. They have drawn considerable legal and international press attention and were the subject of a July 2023 Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing, at which Cadio attended and advised his testifying client.
In another notable case, at his former firm (Saveri & Saveri, Inc.), Cadio represented plaintiffs in a breach of contract case, Bozzio v. EMI Grp. Ltd., alleging defendant recording companies improperly treated certain sales of musicians’ recordings—through music download services, mobile phone mastertone downloads, and licensing for music streaming services—as record sales rather than revenue from licensing, and, as a result, paid the artists a lower royalty rate than the one provided for in their recording contracts. He argued and won an appeal before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (811 F.3d 1144 (2016)), which raised issues of first impression.
Throughout his legal career, Cadio has specialized in complex civil and class action litigation in both federal and state courts, focusing primarily on antitrust suits. His work covers various industries, including electronics, pharmaceuticals, banking, financial institutions, paper products, agriculture, travel, transportation, insurance, and the protein market. He has played a significant role in resolving some of the largest electronics antitrust cases on record, including In re DRAM Antitrust Litigation, In re Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) Antitrust Litigation, In re Optical Disk Drive Products Antitrust Litigation, and In re Lithium-Ion Batteries Antitrust Litigation. He has played a key role on the landmark Capacitors Price-Fixing Antitrust Litigation, which resulted in settlements totaling $604.55 million and breakthroughs in antitrust law.
Cadio is currently representing plaintiffs in the firm’s Apartment Rental Software Antitrust Litigation, alleging a nationwide group of apartment management companies across the United States have illegally raised rents by adopting above-market rents provided to them by a company called RealPage. And he is prosecuting the “protein” cases: a series of price-fixing investigations, and collusion in the meat industry, such as broiler chickens and pork.
In addition to his impressive court record, Cadio is an AV Preeminent-rated lawyer on Martindale-Hubbell. In 2022, he was honored by the American Antitrust Institute for "Outstanding Antitrust Litigation Achievement in Private Law Practice" for his role in Cameron v. Apple Inc. and in 2023 for his role in Capacitors (both N.D. Cal.). He has been named to Northern California Super Lawyers 2010 and 2014-present, and named to the Top 100: Northern California Super Lawyers since 2018. Since 2023, he has been named by Best Lawyers as among the “Best Lawyers in America” in its antitrust litigation category. He has been honored by Lawdragon as one of its 500 Leading Litigators (2023-present), 500 Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers (2023-present), and 500 Leading Consumer Lawyers (2024). And, in 2024, the California Daily Journal named him as one of its “Top Artificial Intelligence Lawyers” and “Top Antitrust Lawyers.”
Outside of his legal practice, Cadio is deeply committed to the community, serving as a volunteer judge with the YMCA Marin County Youth Court, an alternative to the traditional juvenile justice system based on restorative justice principles.
