Charles M. Dyke

Director of Litigation

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Mr. Dyke is an ERISA litigator who has taken bench and jury trials to decision, including a significant pension plan termination case, and handled complex appellate matters. Chuck has 18 years’ experience litigating and advising plan sponsors and fiduciaries on ERISA and other employee benefits matters. Before joining Trucker Huss in 2011, Chuck was a litigation partner in an AmLaw 100 firm. For the first two years of his legal career, Chuck worked as a staff attorney at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, where he served on the agency’s Early Warning Program legal team, played a leading role in obtaining the Sixth Circuit’s decision in United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO, CLC v. United Engineering, Inc., 52 F.3d 1386 (1995) (holding that 1986 & 1987 ERISA amendments displaced union claims for benefits under LMRA), and drafted ERISA’s “missing participants” statute (29 U.S.C. § 1350). Chuck has been recognized as a “Northern California Super Lawyer” each year since 2007.

Chuck has handled or participated in a number of appeals, including in the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fourth, Sixth, and Ninth Circuits in ERISA matters. In 2008, he filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller on behalf of a group of professors of linguistics addressing the grammar and eighteenth-century usage of the language of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The brief was a focus of Justice Scalia’s majority opinion and Justice Stevens’ dissent. Chuck has filed amicus briefs in other cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Illinois Supreme Court, and in the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Seventh and Ninth Circuits.

Chuck speaks and writes on ERISA litigation and benefits-in-bankruptcy topics.

Telephone

(415) 788-3111

Facsimile

(415) 421-2017

E-Mail

Education

• LL.M., 1995
  Georgetown University Law Center
  
• J.D., 1992
  DePaul University College of Law
  • Managing Editor, DePaul Law Review
• B.S., 1985
  University of Maryland

Professional Career

• 2011 - Present
  Director of Litigation
  Trucker Huss
  San Francisco, California
• 2008 - 2011
  Partner
  Nixon Peabody LLP
• 1997 - 2008
  Partner (Associate prior to 2005)
  Thelen LLP
• 1995 - 1997
  Associate
  Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich
• 1993 - 1995
  Staff Attorney
  Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation

Professional Licenses and Affiliations

• Member, The State Bar of California
• Member, Illinois State Bar Association
• Member, District of Columbia Bar Association
• Member, American Bar Association
• Member, Bar Association of San Francisco
• Member, Federal Bar Association