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Christopher A. Taravella
Educational Background
1976 Juris Doctor University of Colorado School of Law with honors 1973 B.S. United States Air Force Academy Engineering Mechanics 1996 Advanced Management Program: International Senior Management Program Harvard Business School Professional Experience and Areas of Concentration Christopher A. Taravella was a judge advocate (JAG) in the United States Air Force for twenty-one years. While on active duty he was an Air Force prosecutor, having more than one hundred trials. He was designated a Special Assistant United States Attorney for civil litigation as the Chief of the Constitutional Torts Branch of The Judge Advocate General’s Office in Washington, D.C. In the Air Force Reserves he was the Staff Judge Advocate of an airlift and refueling wing at Selfridge Air National Guard Base, Michigan. His tours of duty include Special Operations at Hurlburt Field, Florida, a tactical fighter training wing in Zaragoza, Spain, and the Pentagon in Virginia. Chris left active duty with the Air Force to join Chrysler Corporation in 1985, where he was the Litigation Department head under Lee Iacocca. He has extensive experience with commercial and employment litigation, including class actions. He was Chrysler’s Chief Patent Counsel for seven years and was responsible for all intellectual property transactional and litigation matters, including patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secrets. As such, he was responsible for the defense of the intermittent windshield wiper patent infringement litigation filed by Robert Kearns against the auto industry and the bar code/synthetic voice/machine vision patent infringement litigation filed by Jerome Lemelson against the auto and other industries. He was also responsible for all of Chrysler’s commercial contracts.
Chris became the General Counsel of Chrysler Financial Corporation in 1997 and then of the merged Chrysler Financial/Mercedes-Benz Credit unit, a position he held for nine years. He was responsible for the legal, audit, and process management activities of the $95 billion in receivables captive finance unit. This responsibility included sales finance licensing, corporate matters, the defense of class action, lender liability, contract, and employment litigation, the formation of a Utah Industrial Loan Corporation, securities and funding matters, securitization of receivables, and retail and wholesale auto financing.
Since joining the firm Chris has been lead counsel in seven preliminary injunction hearings in both state and federal court and has tried two civil matters to jury verdict with excellent results.
A Colorado native born and raised in Pueblo, Colorado, Chris is admitted to the Bars of Colorado, Michigan, and Wyoming. He is a licensed airplane pilot, single engine – land, and instrument-rated.
He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering Mechanics from the United States Air Force Academy, a Law Degree from the University of Colorado, and is a graduate of the Advanced Management Program, International Senior Management Program, of the Harvard Business School.
Chris served on United States Senator Mark E. Udall’s Service Academies Merit Selection Committee (2010). Chris is a regular soup server at the St. Francis Center, 2323 Curtis Street in Denver (since 2008). He is an Executive Committee Member for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, 2111 Champa Street, also in Denver (since 2010). He has served as a guest faculty member for the Law and Management Departments at the U. S. Air Force Academy (since 2006). Chris is a member, The Judge William E. Doyle Inn of Court (since 2010).
Chris has served as a director of: RouteOne LLC, a credit application aggregation joint venture of GMAC, Ford Motor Credit, Toyota Financial Services, and DaimlerChrysler Financial Services Americas; the YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit; the Bloomfield Hills, Michigan Baseball League; Oxlo Systems, Inc., a provider of automotive retail integration networks; the American Financial Services Association; and has served on the Governing Committee of the Conference on Consumer Finance Law.
He retired from DaimlerChrysler in 2006 and is a shareholder with the Greenwood Village, Colorado law firm of Montgomery Little & Soran, P.C. |
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