For more than four decades, Mr. Mason has been at the forefront of the development of private antitrust litigation in both the United States and abroad. He is admitted to the California and District of Columbia Bars, and numerous federal trial and appellate courts.

A native of Brussels, Belgium, with facility in French, he is a graduate of UCLA and Duke University School of Law. Upon law school graduation in 1972, Mr. Mason served as a law clerk for Judge O.D. Hamlin of the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. He thereafter entered private practice in San Francisco, where he soon developed a particular expertise in antitrust and unfair competition litigation.

From 1973 to 2000, Mr. Mason served as associate, partner and managing partner at Furth, Fahrner and Mason – a firm which had been founded in 1967 by the legendary antitrust attorney, Fred Furth. During Mr. Mason’s tenure, FFM became recognized as one of the premier antitrust firms in the United States – unique in that the firm enjoyed both a significant plaintiffs’ practice, while also serving as defense counsel in several high profile cases involving both private litigants, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Trade Commission, as well as numerous State Attorneys General.

In 2008, Mr. Mason coordinated the merger of FFM into the then Zelle firm which had sought to add antitrust expertise to its existing practice. The firm became known as Zelle Hofmann Voelbel & Mason, with offices throughout the country and in London. Mr. Mason served as managing partner of the San Francesco office, and as a member of the firm’s three-person Executive Committee for the next 14 years. During that time, ZHVM itself became recognized for its antitrust expertise. During Mr. Mason’s tenure, the firm recovered several billions of dollars of antitrust damages in both class action and single firm cases for its clients.

From 1988 to 1989, Mr. Mason served as Acting General Counsel of Kellogg Company, Battle Creek, Michigan. During that time, he coordinated Kellogg’s worldwide litigation, reporting directly to the Chairman of the Board.

Recently, Mr. Mason became a founding partner in Furth Salem Mason & Li LLP – with offices in San Francisco, Florida and Beijing. Mr. Mason will continue to focus on antitrust and unfair competition litigation, including the representation of price fixing victims in recovery litigation – be it in the United States, Europe or China.

In 1998, in connection with the Vitamins MDL litigation in Washington, D.C., Mr. Mason became one of the first attorneys to file an antitrust recovery action against a price fixing cartel on behalf of a Fortune 200 company. Prior to that litigation, it had been relatively rare for large companies to becomes antitrust plaintiffs – but as a result of the substantial recoveries generated by that litigation, individual actions by major U.S. companies who had been victimized by price fixing cartels became increasingly more common.

Prior to the Vitamins litigation, Mr. Mason – together with a London law firm he associated – filed the first private antitrust recovery action in the United Kingdom (on behalf of a UK subsidiary of a major U.S. company), and secured an unprecedented settlement for his client. Prior to that case, enforcement of antitrust laws in the UK had been the exclusive province of the Government – private recoveries for such matters had been unheard of. Since that initial case, Mr. Mason has served as antitrust counsel for several other U.S. and European companies seeking antitrust recoveries from a wide variety of cartels who had engaged in price fixing. In each of these matters, Mr. Mason worked with European based economists and, where necessary, he also associated various European law firms.

In China, in 1995, Mr. Mason became one of the first American lawyers to present formal argument in a Chinese Court. He subsequently served as legal consultant to the Supreme Court of China on the implementation of China’s anti-monopoly law. At the invitation of the Chief Justice, he conducted several seminars on antitrust principles for Justices of that Court, as well as for various lower court judges. He has also lectured widely on antitrust issues before Bar groups in the United States, China and Italy, and has been a speaker at various International Symposiums on WTO legal issues.

Set forth below is a representative sample of Mr. Mason’s publications and presentations.

Practice Areas

• Alternative Dispute Resolution
• Antitrust and Unfair Competition
• Athlete Representation
• Breach of Contract
• Business Disputes and Commercial Litigation
• China Trade Regulation
• China-Related Business
• Class Actions
• Entertainment, Media & Sports
• Intellectual Property
• International Competition
• Litigation and Dispute Resolution
• Trade Regulation

Education

• Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, J.D., 1972
• University of California, Los Angeles, B.A., 1969

Bar Admissions

• California
• District of Colombia

Representative Articles & Presentations

“Conflicts of Law Issues,” International Judicial Conference, Berlin, Germany, May 22-24 2013, panelist

“The Non-Statutory Labor Exemption in Antitrust/Labor Law,” 2011 Sports Law Symposium, September 8, 2011, presenter

“Private Litigation under China’s New Anti-Monopoly Law,” seminar sponsored by the San Francisco Bar Association, February 17, 2011, presenter

“Private Enforcement of Articles 101 and 102 in Europe’s National Courts,” The Comparative Law Yearbook of International Business, published by the Center for International Legal Studies, Volume 32, 2010, co-author

Amateurism as It Relates to Concussions, Performance-enhancing Drugs, and the Use of Athletes’ Images, 2010 Sports Law Symposium, Santa Clara University Law School, September 16, 2010

“A Comment on Private Antitrust Litigation in China,” Competition Law360, April 8, 2010, author

Effectuating Private Antitrust Enforcement under China’s Anti-Monopoly Law, presentation to Chinese Supreme Court, Beijing and Shanghai Supreme Courts and Intermediate Courts and China International Economic Law Society, Beijing, China, February 2, 2010

“Next Battleground in EU Antitrust Litigation,” Law360, April 7, 2009, author

“The Next Battleground in Antitrust Litigation: Private Enforcement of Articles 81 and 82 in the Courts of the European Union’s Member States,” November 2008, co-author

“China’s Proposed Anti-Monopoly Law: The U.S. and European Perspectives,” Asian Law & Practice, Vol. II, Issue 6, November 2004, co-author