Eye on Alumni
April 18, 2008
Beau Sterling, ’95, lost a 4-3 decision in a Nevada Supreme Court case where he represented a baseball fan who was injured by foul ball while eating a sandwich in a restaurant area at a minor league ball field. He had argued that the “baseball rule” protecting stadium operators from liability for foul balls should apply only to the stands. Sterling is a principal in the Las Vegas firm of Sterling Law LLC.
April 10, 2008
Stephen A. Sillman, ’73, officially retired after more than 25 years on the Monterey Superior Court bench. But he will remain as the assigned judge for the upcoming jury trial of a Carmel Valley man accused of fatally shooting two neighbors.
April 5, 2008
L. Whitney Clayton, ’78, was named to the Presidency of the Seventy during an assembly of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints in Salt Lake City. Clayton has been a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy since 2001. A former business litigation lawyer in southern California, he has served the Mormon Church in numerous high-level positions for more than three decades.
April 5, 2008
Harley F. Pinson, ’77, has joined the Bakersfield firm of Klein, DeNatale, Goldner, Cooper, Rosenlieb & Kimball LLP as a partner. He has spent most of his 30-year law career as managing counsel for Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s domestic and international operations.
April 4, 2008
Dawn Houston, ’05, has joined the Silicon Valley Law Group as an associate where she is a member of the business litigation and financial services groups. She was previously with Hansen, Culhane, Jones & Sommer in Sacramento.
April 3, 2008
Thomas Hockel, ’94, has become a name partner at San Francisco’s Kelly, Herlihy & Klein, which will now be known as Kelly, Hockel & Klein. His practice focuses on employment, insurance and ERISA litigation.
April 3, 2008
Robert Busch, ’85, has written a book, How to Win Your California Divorce, The Beginner’s Guide. The Gold River attorney has practiced family law for more than 20 years and his 73-page book is designed to help readers understand the basics of state law.
April 2, 2008
Ric Blumhardt, ’83, the appellate practice group chair at Archer Norris, has launched the California Appellate Law Blog, www.cappellatelaw.com, with an associate in his Walnut Creek office.
April 2, 2008
Chelsea R. Olson, ’06, has joined the San Luis Obispo office of Kronick Moskovitz Tiedemann and Girard as an associate attorney specializing in education law. She had been serving as a judicial clerk at the Hawaii Supreme Court.
April 1, 2008
Larry Westerlund, ’94, is running for a second term on the Fresno City Council even though he will be deployed to Iraq next month as a U.S. Naval Reserve lieutenant commander. The council will name a person to fill out the remainder of the private litigator’s current term and he will return to the council next year if he wins.
April 1, 2008
Thomas L. Hill, ’71, is one of four former McDonough Holland & Allen attorneys who have split off from the Sacramento-based firm to form Martinez Hayes Hyatt & Hill in Yuba City. He is a retired Sutter County Superior Court judge.
March 29, 2008
Kathryn K. Francis, ’94, was the subject of a feature story in the Nevada City Union that lauded her work with the Nevada County District Attorney’s office. The deputy district attorney oversees cases of domestic violence and sexual assault and has successfully prosecuted several high-profile cases within the past two years.
March 25, 2008
Michael Pro,’78, was unanimously appointed by the Merced County Board of Supervisors as the county’s new public defender. A member of the office for nearly three decades, he has served as the chief deputy public defender in recent years.
March 21, 2008
Mark S. Borrell, ’86, was named Alternative Dispute Resolution Advocate of the Year by the Ventura County Bar Association’s ADR Section and the Ventura Center for Dispute Resolution. Judge Borrell has served on the Ventura Superior Court bench since May 2005.
March 17, 2008
Erich Shiners, ’06, has been appointed legal advisor for the Public Employment Relations Board by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since 2006, he has served as an attorney at Renne, Sloan, Holtzman, Sakai Public Law Group, representing public sector and non-profit employers in labor and employment litigation, arbitration and negotiations.
March 16, 2008
Kyriakos Tsakopolous, ’99, has been selected by the World Economic Forum for the Switzerland-based organization’s 2008 Young Global Leader program. The senior executive vice president of AKT Development Corporation in Sacramento, he is a member of the board of trustees of Columbia University and a trustee of the California State University system.
March 15, 2008
Michelle Michaels, ’96, has opened her own Los Angeles firm, Law Offices of Michelle Michaels, and will specialize in criminal defense and white collar crime. She brings nine years experience in criminal defense from her previous felony and misdemeanor representation at the Law Offices of Mark J. Werksman.
March 15, 2008
Christopher Doyle, ’97, has joined the San Francisco office of Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Marmaro as an associate. He was previously with Miller Starr Regalia.
March 13, 2008
Steven Marden, ’78, has joined De La Housaye &Associates as senior trial counsel to head the Walnut Creek firm’s commercial liability trial work. Previously, he was a partner at Burnham Brown in Oakland.
March 11, 2006
Ryan Seeley, ’05, has joined Downey Brand as an associate in the Sacramento law firm’s land use group. He previously practiced with Bornholdt & Associates in San Luis Obispo.
March 10, 2008
Jennifer Scott, ’99, has been elevated to partner at Herum Crabtree Brown. An associate at the Stockton firm since beginning her legal career, her practice involves representing individuals and corporations in general civil and complex commercial litigation.
March 7, 2008
Ronald Sabraw, ’75, was the subject of a feature story in the Los Angeles Daily Journal. The retired Alameda County Superior Court judge is now a private mediator and arbitrator who works out of a San Francisco office.
March 7, 2008
Greg Aghazarian, ’92, is running for a seat in the in State Senate District 5. A Stockton Republican who is unopposed in the June primary, he is finishing his third and final two-year term in the California Assembly.
March 7, 2008
Kevin Mayo, ’85, is the prosecutor in the I-5 strangler case. Roger Kibbe was arraigned and charged with six murders in the 1970s and 1980s. The 68-year-old has been serving 25 to life for a 1991 murder conviction. Mayo is a San Joaquin County deputy district attorney.
March 2, 2008
Christopher Sanders, ’97, has made partner and Jeremy Goldberg, ’07, has become an associate at Ellison, Schneider & Harris LLP in Sacramento.
March 1, 2008
Molly Mrowka, ’97, has been elevated to partner at the San Francisco law firm of Dillingham & Murphy, LLP. Her practice areas include defective products, toxic torts, and premises liability.
March 1, 2008
Michelle Cannon, ’94, has been promoted to shareholder and Marie Nakamura, ’01, and Anne Sherlock, ’00, have been promoted to principal attorneys at Kronick Moskovitz Tiedemann & Girard in Sacramento.
February 28, 2008
Teresa Hillery, ’03, was the co-counsel for a carpenter who won a $205,000 verdict in a six-day fraud trial that involved false representations concerning the sale of property to which the plaintiff had made substantial improvements. She is an associate with the Los Angeles firm of Ivie, McNeill & Wyatt.
February 25, 2008
Brian Kunzi, ’83, has been named to the Nevada Auto Theft and Insurance Fraud Task Force by Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons. The former Mineral County District Attorney is a state deputy attorney general.
February 22, 2008
Mhare Mouradian, ’03, was co-counsel for the defense in a premises liability escalator accident trial where the plaintiff asked for $21 million in damages. A Los Angeles Superior Court jury rendered a defense verdict. He is an associate at the Los Angeles office of Murchison & Cumming LLP.
Feb 20, 2008
Eric Heryford, ’92, is running for a seat on the Trinity County Superior Court bench in June. A county deputy district attorney for the past eight years, he previously worked for the California District Attorneys Association.
February 18, 2008
Shaun Khojayan, ’98, was featured in a San Diego Business Journal story. The Beverly Hills attorney, who specializes in federal criminal defense work, has trademarked a system of jury selection materials that he hopes to market to other lawyers and law firms.
February 14, 2008
Kevin Cooksy, ’95, has joined Perlegen Sciences in Mountain View as vice president of business development. Previously, he served in the corporate development group of Agilent Technologies, most recently completing the $245 million acquisition of Stratagene Corporation. Perlegen is a leader in the biomedical race to discover and understand the role that human genetic variation plays in patients’ response to drugs.
February 11, 2008
Bradley Thomas, ’77, won a defense verdict in a Sacramento Superior Court auto accident case where an injured plaintiff asked for $688,000 in damages.
February 7, 2008
Grant Puleo, ’95, and Spencer Skeen, ’96, have been elected to partnership at the San Diego firm of Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch LLP. Puleo’s practice includes a wide array of real estate, finance and business transactions. Skeen’s practice emphasizes business and commercial litigation, employment counseling and litigation and real estate litigation.
February 6, 2008
Darren Cottriel, ’96, was co-counsel for the plaintiff in a complex breach of oral contract case in Orange Superior Court that resulted in a settlement involving $3.2 million and a transfer of ownership in a multimillion development and investment company. He is a partner at Jones Day in Irvine.
February 6, 2008
Geoffrey White, ’79, won a follow-up decision to a $134 million verdict against Wyeth in Washoe District Court when a judge denied the pharmaceutical giant’s request for a new trial. White was co-counsel for three women in an October 2007 trial that determined that a hormone replacement drug had caused breast cancer. A partner in the Reno firm of White Meany & Wetherall, LLP, he is one of Nevada’s leading personal injury, medical malpractice and products liability trial lawyers.
February 11, 2008
Douglas J. Evertz, ’86, has joined Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps LLP in Irvine as a partner in the firm’s real estate and environmental litigation practice group. Previously, he served as head of the public law litigation department at Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth in Newport Beach. There he built and directed the Public Law Litigation Department. Serving at SYCR for more than 10 years, Evertz represented cities, counties, other public agencies, developers and investors in a special counsel and litigation capacity. He has served as a Judge Pro Tem appointed by the Orange County Superior Court.
February 10, 2008
Frank Pacheco, ’92, and Phil Urie, ’81, are two of five candidates who will run in the June 2008 primary election to replace a retiring San Joaquin Superior Court judge. Pacheco is a family law practitioner while Urie is a San Joaquin County deputy district attorney.
February 5, 2008
Richard Yanes, ’75, has been named executive director of the Fresno Metro Ministry, a multi-faith, multicultural organization that promotes social, economic and environmental justice. Previously, he served as the executive director of the Clinical Social Work Association in Washington, D.C.
January 31, 2008
Ernest L. Weiss, ’83, has been promoted to shareholder at the Orange County office of Klinedinst PC. An experienced trial attorney who joined the firm in 2005, he has handled a wide array of commercial litigation, including product liability, professional liability, construction and toxic tort, and environmental litigation. He has also successfully litigated a number of governmental entity and commercial transportation cases, including lawsuits alleging wrongful death.
January 31, 2008
Richard Sutherland, ’05, has joined Santa Barbara-based Cappello & Noel as an associate. He was previously an associate with Mastagni, Holstedt, Amick, Miller, Johnsen & Uhrhammer in Sacramento.
Jan. 30, 2008
Kelton Lee Gibson, ’75, was co-counsel for a plaintiff who won a $650,000 settlement against a defendant’s employee who set him on fire. The employee was convicted in a criminal case. Gibson is a senior partner in the Ventura office of Myers,
Widders, Gibson, Jones & Schneider LLP.
January 30, 2008
Jeremy Jessup, ’00, has been promoted to partner at Matheny Sears Linkert & Jaime. He has been an associate attorney at the Sacramento firm for six years.
January 28, 2008
Gene Blackard, Jr., ’89, has been named managing partner of Archer Norris, one of the Easy Bay’s largest law firms with offices in Walnut Creek, Sacramento, Newport Beach and Los Angeles. In addition to defending contractors and manufacturers in a range of cases, he represents major insurers and self-insured entities. Ric Blumhardt, ’83, was re-elected to the firm’s management committee. A specialist in insurance coverage and bad faith litigation, he is also in charge of the firm’s appellate department.
January 25, 2008
Gerrit W. Wood, ’79, and Gary M. Johnson, ’95, were appointed to the Superior Court of California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Wood, who will join the Sacramento Superior Court bench, has worked as a senior trial attorney at Vitale and Lowe in Rancho Cordova, which has represented global insurer Zurich North America, since 2002. He previously spent 23 years at Donahue, Wood and Loving, where he became a managing partner in the late 1990s. Johnson will be sworn in as a Tulare County Superior Court judge. He currently practices civil law with the Visalia firm of Sherwood & Johnson. He began his legal career with Kloster, Ruddell, Hornburg, Cochran, Stanton & Smith, later moving to Fitzgerald, Aguilar, Sherwood, Durante & Johnson.
January 21, 2008
William Routsis, ’89, and Bruce Lindsay, ’74, represented the defendant in a high-profile Reno murder case. Convicted murderer Darren Mack had dismissed his previous lawyers. Routsis and Lindsay filed an unsuccessful motion to withdraw guilty pleas in the murder of Mack’s wife and the sniper shooting of the couple’s divorce court judge.
January 18, 2008
Ann Fleenor, ’98, died at the age of 66. She went to law school at the age of 53 and was an Order of the Coif graduate. She was an attorney with the state Department of Managed Care and volunteered for the several organizations, including Legal Services of Northern California where she worked at the Senior Legal Hotline from 1999 to 2007.
January 16, 2008
Anup Tikku, ’96, has been promoted to partner at Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis in San Francisco. A member of the firm since 2002, his practice focuses on intellectual property litigation.
January 12, 2008
Robert Armstrong, ’78, and Vida Thomas, ’93, made presentations at Pacific McGeorge’s seventh annual Southern California MCLE in Long Beach. Armstrong spoke on detection and prevention of substance abuse while Thomas spoke on investigating discrimination or harassment.
January 11, 2008
Deidra Lowe, ’75, has been appointed to the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board. Since 1985, she has served as associate attorney and partner with Hanna, Brophy, MacLean, McAleer & Jensen, a law firm that specializes in workers’ compensation defense. Previously, Lowe was an associate attorney for the law firms Metz, Johnson & Larson from 1981 to 1985 and Green & Azevedo from 1979 to 1981.
January 4, 2008
David Lane, ’78, has been elevated to shareholder at Farmer Smith & Lane LLP. He was previously a partner at Bullivant Houser & Bailey.
January 7, 2008
Noel Waters, ’81, and Jim Wilson, ’81, are two of three contenders running for the Nevada First Judicial District seat being vacated by Judge William Maddox, ’77. Waters, who served as Carson City District Attorney for 21 years, joined Lionel Sawyer & Collins in January 2007. Wilson operates the Law Office of Jim Wilson in Carson City.
January 2, 2008
Suzanne E. Kennedy, ’07, joined the Stockton law firm of Neumiller & Beardslee as an associate practicing civil law. The Elk Grove native worked for a leading international agricultural-trading company in operations and commodities trading before attending law school.
January 1, 2008
Leigh Bass, ’95, has been elevated to partner at Loeb, Block & Partners LLP in New York City where he practices international business law, including representation of clients in domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions.
January 1, 2008
Edward J. Wright Jr., ’82, assumed the role of managing partner of Martensen Wright LLP, which opened an office in San Francisco. The firm, which serves Scandinavian clients doing business in the U.S., is headquartered in Hirtsals, Denmark.
January 1, 2008
Christine E. Jacobs, ’01, has been elevated to equity partner at Hansen, Culhane, Kohls, Jones & Sommer, LLP.
