Tadhg Dooley

Tadhg is a Partner in the firm’s Litigation Department, where his practice focuses on appellate and complex civil litigation. He has extensive experience handling appeals in state and federal courts throughout the country and has obtained favorable results for a diverse range of clients, from federal prisoners to foreign presidents, big companies to small towns. Among other recent successes, Tadhg helped a municipality overturn a $6.8 million verdict in the Connecticut Supreme Court, and helped a dental practice overturn a $3.7 million verdict in the Georgia Supreme Court. Tadhg has also been called on to craft amicus curiae briefs advancing the positions of clients in the U.S. and Connecticut Supreme Courts.

At the trial level, Tadhg has represented clients confronting a variety of legal challenges, including defamation and libel suits, consumer class actions, alleged Title IX violations, and lawsuits concerning institutional responses to child sexual abuse. Among other favorable outcomes, he recently secured the dismissal of a defamation suit in one of the first cases to test Connecticut’s “anti-SLAPP” statute and persuaded a trial court to dismiss a sexual-abuse lawsuit brought by 19 plaintiffs against a national youth services organization. In 2016, Tadhg successfully defended a Connecticut municipality in a bench trial relating to the validity of its mayoral election.

Tadhg has devoted significant time to pro bono matters at the trial and appellate levels. Along with Wiggin and Dana attorney Ben Daniels, he runs the Appellate Litigation Project at Yale Law School, supervising students representing indigent clients in the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second and Third Circuits. He has been honored by Connecticut Legal Services for his pro bono work on behalf of a single mother facing a defamation lawsuit and received Wiggin and Dana’s Pro Bono Achievement Award in connection with his successful appeal of an Espionage Act sentence in the Second Circuit.

Tadhg joined Wiggin and Dana following a clerkship with Judge José A. Cabranes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He previously clerked for Judge Robert N. Chatigny of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. Between his clerkships, Tadhg worked as an associate at Ellis & Winters LLP in Raleigh, North Carolina, where his practice focused primarily on the needs of university clients. He earned his J.D. from Duke University School of Law, where he was Executive Editor of the Journal of Law & Contemporary Problems and the winner of the Dean’s Cup Moot Court Competition, and received his B.A. from Boston University.