KELLI SAGER
Partner
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
Kelli Sager has spent more than 38 years representing media and entertainment companies, including broadcasters, film producers and distributors, newspapers and magazines, and Web publishers, as well as individual journalists and authors. She joined DWT as a partner in 1994 to develop the firm’s media and entertainment practice in California, which has grown to include more than 30 lawyers statewide (and more than 60 nationally), who handle litigation, production work and transactional matters in the media/entertainment industry.
She has argued dozens of times in federal and state appellate courts, including many times in the California Supreme Court and 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, achieving results for her clients that include precedent-setting rulings protecting their rights to gather and disseminate content to the public.
Sager’s work as a litigator defending her clients in tort lawsuits – defamation, invasion of privacy, misappropriation and related claims – has resulted in important legal precedents with widespread application to the media and entertainment industry. Examples include ALADS v. Los Angeles Times (prior restraint); Rall v. Tribune 365 LLC and Thomas v. Los Angeles Times (defamation); Maloney v. T3 Media and Brown v. Electronic Arts (misappropriation); and Shulman v. CBS (privacy), among dozens of reported decisions.
Sager’s work also has resulted in cases establishing the public’s and press’ rights of access to court proceedings and government documents. Sager routinely is enlisted to represent the media’s access rights in high-profile trials, including the trials of O.J. Simpson, Eric Holder, Jr. (sentenced in 2023 for of the murder of Nipsey Hussle), Phil Spector, Winona Ryder and Anthony Pellicano, among many others.
