Our Attorneys

Charles Barnhill, Jr.

Contact Chuck
  • Miner, Barnhill & Galland, P.C.
    44 E Mifflin Street, Suite 803
    Madison, WI 53703
  • (608) 255-5200

Education

  • University of Michigan Law School, J.D. (1968) – Honors: Cum laude; Order of the Coif; Assistant Editor, University of Michigan Law Review; Barristers Society
  • University of Pennsylvania, B.S. (1965)

Charles Barnhill — one of the firm’s founding partners and presently of-counsel to the firm — is an elected Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. In his long career as a trial lawyer, Chuck has litigated virtually every kind of civil case — from arbitrations to complex class actions — in a wide variety of subject areas (including employment, securities, lender liability and usury, and antitrust) on behalf of individual, business and state government clients around the country. He has lectured and taught extensively in the area of litigation.

  • Representation of Governments in Civil Litigation

    Since 2003, Chuck has headed the firm’s extensive team of lawyers representing the Attorneys General of eight different states in the “Average Wholesale Price” litigation against pharmaceutical manufacturers, wholesalers and price publishers for violation of state consumer fraud and Medicaid fraud statutes. In this still-ongoing litigation, Chuck and other firm attorneys have taken five jury trials to verdict against pharmaceutical manufacturers and have achieved recoveries totaling hundreds of millions of dollars for these state clients.

  • Antitrust Securities Litigation

    Chuck has handled a number of large-scale antitrust class actions under federal and state antitrust laws. For example, he has brought suits using state antitrust statutes to recover large-scale relief for indirect purchasers who are not covered by the federal antitrust laws. He also was lead counsel in a lawsuit achieving a substantial recovery on behalf of a class of more than 100,000 attorneys who had purchased the country’s largest bar review course at prices allegedly inflated by antitrust violations.

  • Securities Litigation

    Chuck has served as lead counsel for plaintiffs in a number of federal securities class actions, such as in the Pacific Lumber facet of the Drexel Burnham Lambert Group class action litigation, which resulted in a settlement in excess of $140 million. Another lawsuit successfully applied the federal securities laws to land sales transactions, obtaining massive relief for a class of purchasers of land in four failed Colorado recreational real estate developments.

  • Employment Litigation

    Chuck has been lead counsel for plaintiffs in a number of high-profile class actions, multiplaintiff cases and individual actions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and has tried many such cases to verdict before juries and judges. Several of these lawsuits resulted in recoveries that were, at the time, the largest or among the largest of their kind on record in America. He also represented a large and active public employee union in Illinois for more than twenty years, and in the course of such litigation won a number of landmark lawsuits over the denial of promised benefits.

  • Lender Liability and Usory Statutes

    Among several actions against lenders who breached loan commitments to borrowers, Chuck won a jury verdict (upheld on appeal) of almost $2 million. He handled a class action by a “rent to own” company alleging violation of state usury laws that was settled in excess of $16 million.

Honors and Community Service Activities

Listed in Best Lawyers in America for each year since the publication”s inception

Listed in Who’s Who in American Law and Who’s Who in America

Appointed as special master by the United States District Court of the Northern District of Illinois to arbitrate class claim in case of Lumpkin, et al. v. International Harvester, Re: Wisconsin Steel Co., et al., Case Nos. 81 C 6674 and 80 B 3766-3773

Elected as fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers (2001)

Member, Board of Directors, Legal Aid Society of Chicago (1972-1974)

Co-Chairman, Employment Litigation Committee, Litigation Section, American Bar Association

Member, Board of Governors, Chicago Council of Lawyers (1971-1973)


Bar Admissions

Supreme Court of Illinois (1968)

Supreme Court of Wisconsin (1988)

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (1969)

U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin (1987)

U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin (1988)

U.S. Supreme Court (1973)


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