Melvin L. Chung

Partner, Long Beach

Direct:  714.225.9888

Email:  mchung@bdhch.com

Corporate & Business Affairs, Intellectual Property 

International Trade, Customs, and Transportation

Melvin L. Chung is a partner in the firm's Long Beach office. He represents clients in transactions, regulatory matters, and business disputes. His industry coverage focuses on Pacific Rim trade, supply chain logistics, and transportation with significant overlap into e-commerce and retail sectors.  

As outside general counsel to companies and small businesses, Mel advises on governance, compliance, transactions, protection of intellectual property, and employee relations. He also oversees litigation, and has successfully defended countless labor cases before the Labor Commissioner since 1997. His transactional practice focuses on sell-side representation in business transfers, asset sales, capitalization and funding from seed to Series-A across a range of industries, including seller representation in the transfer of medical, dental, and optometry practices.  

Mel's international trade practice focuses on advising importers on best practices under the reasonable care mandate, tariff analysis and classification, origin and marking issues, and intellectual property. As a believer in proactive preventative law, Mel promotes the use of binding ruling requests whenever feasible to obtain advance decisions on how CBP will treat a commodity. He represents importers facing U.S. Customs (CBP) actions for liquidated damages and fines, penalties, and forfeitures, from initial detention/seizure notice to petitions for relief. Mel has also successfully recovered large sums of money for travelers in U.S. Customs currency seizure cases. 

On the transportation side, Mel represents commercial parties and NVOCC/OTI intermediaries in cargo loss claims and all manner of disputes concerning transit, mis-delivery, and payments. He has successfully litigated issues under Title 46 (COGSA) including limitations of liability, jurisdiction, forum selection clauses and invocation of forum non conveniens. Mel regularly counsels clients in carrier lien enforcements and demurrage/detention disputes. In the wake of the 2020 pandemic's choke on the global supply chain, Mel advocates on behalf of parties seeking to recover unlawful demurrage/detention fees under new federal and state laws that now provide direct remedies, including administrative adjudication by the Federal Maritime Commission demurrage/detention arbitration process. 

Early in his career as an associate, Mel was disheartened when his first potential clients could not afford the firm he was working at. He views small businesses as great long-term opportunities, but they are often underserved simply due to pricing. For this reason, Mel has long since offered small business owners alternative fee plans and billing arrangements whenever feasible.

Loyola Law School, Los Angeles (Juris Doctor, 1996)

Cornell Law School, Paris Institute of International and Comparative Law (Certificate, 1995)

University of California, Los Angeles (Bachelor of Arts, 1992)

Related:

-- Judicial Extern to the Honorable Lisa Hill Fenning, United States Bankruptcy Court, Central District of California (1995)

-- Criminal Law Extern, Los Angeles City Attorney, Special Operations Division on Counterfeit Goods (1995)

-- Pro Bono Volunteer, Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates/Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (1993)

-- Pro Bono Volunteer, Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (1993)

Supreme Court of the State of California (1997)

United States Court of International Trade (1997)

United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (1998)

United States District Court, Central District of California (1997)

United States District Court, Southern District of California (2009)

United States District Court, Northern District of California (2010)

- Peer reviewed "best of the best" in Pasadena Magazine's Top Attorneys List.

- Member, Los Angeles Customs Brokers and Freight Forwarders Assoc. (LACBFFA)

- Member, Korean American Bar Association (KABA)

- Special Master, State Bar of California Special Master Program (2005-2009)
- Judge, Thomas Tang National Moot Court Competition, National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (2005) 

- Panel Speaker, KOTRA Korean Media and Content Market Conference, Korea Trade and Development Agency of South Korea (2015)

- National Customs Brokers and Freight Forwarders Association (Past member)

- Los Angeles County Bar Association (Past member)

- Beverly Hills Bar Association (Past member)