Daniel L. Tobey, Chair, Board of Directors

Daniel L. Tobey is Chair of the nonprofit AT&T Performing Arts Center’s Board of Directors. Danny has been a Director since 2016 and became its fifth chair in 2020.

Danny is a Partner at DLA Piper and a medical doctor and software entrepreneur who represents life sciences, technology and healthcare clients in a variety of regulatory and litigation matters involving FDA, CDC, HHS, CMS, private payers, and tort and commercial litigants. Danny leads the firm’s team that assists companies navigating the legal landscape of emerging and disruptive technologies including AI and data science. In 2019, Danny received a Burton Award from the Library of Congress recognizing “the best of the best writers in the legal profession” among the nation’s top 1,000 largest law firms.

A graduate of Harvard College, Yale Law School, and UT Southwestern Medical School, Danny has litigated successfully some of his clients’ most challenging and important cases. He designed the winning scientific case in the first Hatch-Waxman suit in the Eastern District of Texas. He obtained a unanimous reversal in federal appellate court in an R&D tax case of first impression, increasing his clients’ tax refund from low-six to high-seven figures. He has successfully handled as lead counsel litigations arising from M&A transactions for a molecular diagnostics company and others. He has represented healthcare clients in matters ranging from credentialing and internal investigation to peer review and business tort claims.

Danny is a thought leader on legal issues in medicine and AI. He advised the American Medical Association on its 2019 policy on AI and medical liability and was invited to present at the inaugural AI, Ethics, and Society conference sponsored by Google and IBM. Danny’s clients include IDx, the first FDA-approved fully autonomous AI diagnostic, and Spectral MD, the Breakthrough-designated AI imaging system funded by BARDA. Danny advises leading global pharmaceutical and device companies on adopting and designing AI systems. His writing on legal issues in medicine and biotechnology appears in National Law Journal, American Health Law Association Connections, Proceedings of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Yale Journal of Law & Technology, and Health Law Litigation. Danny led a successful software company from inception to acquisition. His original medical research appears in Pediatric Blood & Cancer and Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology.

Beyond healthcare, Danny has represented private equity, finance and other clients in some of their most pressing cases in state and federal court. He has argued successfully before the en banc Delaware Supreme Court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals among others.

Danny chairs the Legal Advisory Counsel of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science and has served on the boards of the Parkland Foundation, the SPCA of Texas, the Texas Israel Alliance, and the regional Anti-Defamation League. He has co-chaired the Judiciary Committee and the Membership & Admissions Committee of the Dallas Bar Association and sits on the Governing Council of its Business Litigation Section. Danny previously served on the Executive Committee of the Yale Law School Association.