Eleven Zimmerman Reed attorneys have been selected to the 2026 Super Lawyers and Rising Stars lists.
Never defense.
Zimmerman Reed has spent more than forty years representing one side of the courtroom.
The plaintiff.
Individuals. Families. Workers. Consumers. Investors. Public entities. States.
Never the defense.
That is not one practice at Zimmerman Reed. It is the firm — founded in 1983 to represent plaintiffs, and built around that work ever since. Four decades of experience, all of it accumulated from the same chair.
The eleven attorneys below have spent their careers in it.
Why this recognition matters
That singular focus does not guarantee recognition. But over time, it leaves a body of work that other lawyers notice.
Super Lawyers, a Thomson Reuters publication, is not a directory you can buy your way into. Selection runs through a patented, multi-phase process. Attorneys enter the candidate pool by peer nomination or through the publisher’s independent research, then are scored against twelve indicators of professional achievement — verdicts and settlements, experience, honors, bar activity, pro bono service, scholarly writing. The highest scorers in each practice area are reviewed by a blue ribbon panel of the top-rated attorneys in that same field.
Five percent of the lawyers in a state are selected to the Super Lawyers list. The Rising Stars list is limited to 2.5 percent.
The safeguards are the interesting part. Lawyers cannot nominate themselves, and campaigning for nominations is prohibited outright. Nominations from outside a candidate’s own firm carry more weight than nominations from inside it, and in-firm nominations count only if matched by at least one from outside. The publisher tracks who nominates whom, specifically to detect reciprocal nominations and block voting by firms. No volume of nominations can guarantee selection. Advertising buys nothing.
What that leaves is a narrow thing, and a hard one to fake: an assessment, by the people who have watched you work, of whether you are any good at it. And the people who have watched most closely are usually the ones sitting on the other side of the table.
It also resets every year. Super Lawyers conducts new balloting and a new blue ribbon review annually, and the publisher is explicit that being listed one year does not guarantee being listed the next. A long run on these lists is not a credential someone earned once and kept. It is the same judgment, rendered by peers, over and over.
The 2026 honorees
SUPER LAWYERS
Gordon Rudd
2026 Minnesota Super Lawyers
Gordon Rudd has been selected to the Minnesota Super Lawyers list every year since 2006 — twenty-one consecutive years. A managing partner who has practiced at Zimmerman Reed since 1991, he works in consumer fraud, mass torts, wildfire and disaster evacuation, and employment law, and has been appointed lead counsel in cases brought in state and federal courts across the country.
He represented thousands of residents of Minot, North Dakota, injured by the largest release of anhydrous ammonia in U.S. history, and nursing home residents sickened by the second-largest Hepatitis C outbreak in U.S. history. He led the team representing banks and financial institutions recovering losses from the 2013 Target data breach.
June Pineda Hoidal
2026 Minnesota Top 100 · 2026 Minnesota Top 50 Women · 2026 Minnesota Super Lawyers
June Pineda Hoidal appears on three 2026 lists. She was selected to the Top 100: Minnesota Super Lawyers list for the second consecutive year, and to the Top 50: Women Minnesota Super Lawyers list for the third. She has been recognized by her peers every year since 2015 — as a Rising Star through 2018, and on the Minnesota Super Lawyers list every year since 2019. That is twelve consecutive years.
A managing partner and Chair of the firm’s Public Client Practice, she represents public entities as plaintiffs in complex litigation across the country, and leads the firm’s cases involving securities and financial fraud, ERISA violations, and False Claims Act violations. She also represents victims of wildfires and disaster evacuations. Her advocacy at every level, including U.S. Supreme Court briefing, has earned her a national reputation among state attorneys general.
She led the firm’s representation of the State of Minnesota in its case against Juul and Altria, which resolved in a $60.5 million settlement. She was one of seven Zimmerman Reed attorneys named 2023 Attorneys of the Year by Minnesota Lawyer for that outcome, and was named “Lawyer of the Year” for Mass Tort Litigation and Class Actions in Minneapolis by Best Lawyers in its 2026 edition.
Brian Gudmundson
2026 Minnesota Super Lawyers
Brian Gudmundson has been recognized by his peers every year since 2010 — as a Rising Star from 2010 through 2016, and on the Minnesota Super Lawyers list every year since 2017. That is seventeen consecutive years without a gap.
He litigates and leads large-scale, multiparty cases for individuals, businesses, and public and private institutional clients, with a focus on consumer, data privacy, and sports litigation. That work regularly requires mapping out remedies for wrongs the law has not yet addressed, and it has drawn coverage from The New York Times, The Atlantic, CBS News, and ViceSports. He was named to the 2025 Lawdragon 500 Global Plaintiff Lawyers.
David Cialkowski
2026 Minnesota Top 100 · 2026 Minnesota Super Lawyers
David Cialkowski was selected to the 2026 Top 100: Minnesota Super Lawyers list — his seventh consecutive year on it. He has been on the Minnesota Super Lawyers list every year since 2015, and was a Rising Stars honoree before that.
With more than two decades in complex and class actions, his practice focuses on antitrust, consumer protection, and product liability. He has been appointed class counsel and has held multiple MDL leadership roles, and his advocacy has helped define elements of state and federal class action law — particularly for state attorneys general acting on behalf of residents to redress anticompetitive conduct. He was named to the 2025 Lawdragon 500 Global Plaintiff Lawyers.
Behdad Sadeghi
2026 Minnesota Super Lawyers
Behdad Sadeghi has been recognized every year since 2019 — as a Rising Star from 2019 through 2022, and on the Minnesota Super Lawyers list every year since 2023. Eight consecutive years, no gap.
A member of the firm’s Public Client group, he practices in consumer protection, securities and financial fraud, and antitrust in state and federal courts. He represents two states in the opioid litigation and another state in litigation against Juul Labs over its e-cigarette products and youth-targeted marketing. He was one of seven Zimmerman Reed attorneys named 2023 Attorneys of the Year by Minnesota Lawyer for the outcome in State of Minnesota v. Juul Labs.
Carolyn Glass Anderson
2026 Minnesota Super Lawyers
Carolyn Glass Anderson has been selected to the Minnesota Super Lawyers list every year since 2014 — thirteen consecutive years. She joined Zimmerman Reed in 1997 and went on to serve as the firm’s managing partner for sixteen years. She is now Partner Emeritus and Of Counsel.
She led the legal team representing investors against American Express Financial Advisors in an action challenging the company’s practices and breaches of fiduciary duty, which resulted in a $100 million settlement. Working with a coalition of four attorneys general, she led the team representing the State of Mississippi in consumer fraud and antitrust claims against LCD display manufacturers. She represented more than one hundred faith-based nonprofit organizations pro bono in litigation arising from the $3.6 billion Petters Ponzi scheme, and was appointed by the federal court to serve as Assistant Liquidating Trustee for assets distributed to defrauded investors.
She was one of seven Zimmerman Reed attorneys named 2023 Attorneys of the Year by Minnesota Lawyer for the outcome in State of Minnesota v. Juul Labs. Best Lawyers named her Minneapolis Lawyer of the Year for Mass Tort Litigation and Class Actions — Plaintiffs four years running, 2022 through 2025. She lectures on complex litigation and legal ethics.
Caleb Marker
2026 Southern California Super Lawyers
Caleb Marker was selected to the 2026 Southern California Super Lawyers list, his third consecutive year. Before that he was named a Rising Star eight consecutive times, from 2015 through 2022 — eleven years of peer recognition in total.
Managing partner of the firm’s Los Angeles office, he practices in consumer protection, wildfire recovery, and employment. His clients include consumers, misclassified employees, mortgage and student loan borrowers, senior citizens, and wildfire victims — among them survivors of the Camp Fire in Butte County and the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. He has played a central role in the emerging plaintiffs’ arbitration practice, and tried the first merits arbitration in the country to allege that a gig economy worker was an employee rather than an independent contractor.
RISING STARS
Rising Stars is not a separate or lesser evaluation. Every attorney goes through the full Super Lawyers selection process first. Those who are not selected to the Super Lawyers list, but who are either forty or younger or in practice ten years or less, are then considered for Rising Stars. The process is otherwise the same, and the list is limited to no more than 2.5 percent of the lawyers in the state — half the share of the Super Lawyers list.
In other words, the attorneys below were measured against the entire Minnesota bar before they were measured against their own generation.
Michael Laird
2026 Minnesota Rising Stars
Michael Laird has been selected to the Minnesota Rising Stars list every year since 2021 — six consecutive years. A partner in the Minneapolis office, he handles complex class actions and multidistrict litigation in sports law, data breach and privacy, and consumer protection. He has obtained settlement awards for former NFL players suffering from cognitive decline, and certified a nationwide class of financial institutions in a data breach action.
He currently serves as a court-appointed member of the leadership committees in a data breach action against ParkMobile and a consumer class action against Elanco concerning an allegedly harmful pet collar, sitting on the law and briefing, complaint drafting, and class certification committees in both.
Charles Toomajian III
2026 Minnesota Rising Stars
Charles Toomajian III has been selected to the Minnesota Rising Stars list every year since 2021 — six consecutive years. A partner in the Minneapolis office and a member of the Public Client group, he represents the State of Minnesota in its litigation against Juul over the deceptive marketing of e-cigarettes to Minnesota’s youth, and two states in the opioid litigation.
In the firm’s False Claims Act practice, he represents whistleblowers who come forward to report fraud against state and federal government programs. He has also represented individuals under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and other consumer statutes. He was one of seven Zimmerman Reed attorneys named 2023 Attorneys of the Year by Minnesota Lawyer for the Juul outcome.
Molly Billion
2026 Minnesota Rising Stars
Molly Billion has been selected to the Minnesota Rising Stars list every year since 2024 — three consecutive years. She was licensed in Minnesota in 2021 and named to the list within three years of beginning practice.
An associate in the Minneapolis office, she represents patients of fertility clinics who suffered the loss of their embryos; employees in wage disputes and gig-economy misclassification matters; and consumers in privacy, contract, and financial fraud cases. Before joining Zimmerman Reed she appeared in immigration court on behalf of asylum seekers. Before law school, she served as a Guardian ad Litem in Minnesota’s Fourth Judicial District, advocating for children in child protection cases.
Zachary Freese
2026 Minnesota Rising Stars
Zachary Freese has been selected to the Minnesota Rising Stars list for 2025 and 2026. An associate in the Minneapolis office, he works in antitrust and consumer protection, representing people harmed by collusion, price-fixing, and monopoly power.
He currently represents a putative class of consumers against a global eyewear conglomerate, and a class of restaurants and catering businesses against the nation’s largest pork, beef, and turkey processors. He clerked for Judge William H. Koch and Judge Kerry W. Meyer in Minnesota’s Fourth Judicial District.
“You don’t get to choose who respects your work. You only get to choose the work. This firm chose in 1983. In my thirty-five years here, we have never had to choose again.”
— Gordon Rudd, Managing Partner
Plaintiff-side litigation. Since 1983.
Zimmerman Reed LLP is a plaintiff-side complex and class action litigation firm founded in 1983, with offices in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. The firm represents individuals, consumers, workers, investors, public entities, and states in class actions, mass torts, antitrust, consumer protection, securities litigation, data privacy and data breach, employment, wildfire and disaster recovery, False Claims Act matters, and sports law. It has been appointed lead counsel in complex litigation in state and federal courts across the country, and has earned a “Best Law Firm” ranking from U.S. News & World Report since 2010.
Super Lawyers Magazine | July, 2026
To learn more about the Super Lawyers and Rising Stars and see the full lists, visit here.
