We are pleased to announce the partnerships of James Hanna and Daniel Bernardone and the addition of our newest associate, Shehan Witana.
James Hanna joins RL&L’s Scottsdale office with nearly 30 years of legal experience, both in private practice and as general counsel at private companies.
Hanna is a strategic multi-faceted corporate and transactional attorney whose practice includes mergers and acquisitions, business formation, commercial agreements, organizational and strategic planning matters, and corporate general counsel activities, including compliance and ESG matters.
His experience has touched many industries, including upstream and midstream energy services, manufacturing, construction, healthcare, telecommunications, aerospace and defense, government contracts, and includes both public and private company matters ranging from the largest and most complex deals to transactions of millions of dollars.
Hanna is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and earned an undergraduate degree in political science from Texas Christian University.
Daniel Bernardone has been with RL&L since early 2021 working in the RL&L Scottsdale office. He was promoted to Partner in January. Bernardone is a litigator whose practice primarily consists of commercial litigation, insurance coverage, insurance bad-faith litigation, and civil litigation.
He has extensive experience dealing with insurance carriers and insurance coverage issues. He represents policyholders by advising on insurance recovery issues and litigating bad-faith claims.
In his commercial litigation practice, Bernardone has represented creditors and debtors in loan repayment disputes, partners in complex business divorces, creditor trusts in Chapter 11 bankruptcies, companies in sale disputes, landlords and tenants in real estate disputes.
Bernardone is a graduate of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. He earned an undergraduate degree in political science from Marist College.
Shehan Witana joins RL&L’s Scottsdale office as an associate on our transactional team. Witana is a corporate attorney whose practice includes healthcare and life sciences, commercial transactions, mergers and acquisitions, data privacy, deal management, risk assessment and remediation, compliance, and corporate general counsel activities.
Prior to joining RL&L he was in-house counsel for a preeminent healthtech startup making him intimately familiar with facilitating growth in highly regulated markets and working with executives to build solutions that are compliant and scalable.
Witana is a graduate of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and earned his undergraduate degree in philosophy at the University of California Riverside.