The OC Cadre of Specialists Is Small and Tight-Knit
Product liability, a specialized area within personal injury, is not for the meek and undercapitalized.
Product liability cases often involve catastrophic events in which people are maimed, paralyzed, sickened or in some instances killed.
But Orange County has its share of product-liability attorneys. In fact it has some of the heavyweights, including plaintiff attorney Mark Robinson, who is nationally known. Robinson won the landmark Ford Pinto case in the ’70s and has been hot since. Last year, he was involved in the national tobacco settlement and a case against GM that sparked headlines when a jury awarded the plaintiffs $4.9 billion. (That was later reduced.)
In order to take on the big companies, plaintiff attorneys need to have enough backing to gather up the best of the best nationally known experts. Plaintiff attorneys,who get paid only if they win,also have to pay for all of the other case expenses up front.
In addition to Robinson’s firm,Robinson, Calcagnie & Robinson,a lot of plaintiff work is done by Capretz & Associates and Wylie Aitken. Other OC firms that work on behalf of product-liability plaintiffs include Horton, Barbaro & Reilly and Lopez, Hodes, Restaino, Milman & Skikos.
One of the nationally known product-liability attorneys on the defense side is Frank Rothrock, a partner in Palmieri, Tyler, Wiener, Wilhelm & Waldron. He specializes in electromagnetic field work, representing utility companies.
Art Greenfield and Hoot Gibson, both of Snell & Wilmer, specialize in automotive-defect cases and represent companies like General Motors and Ford. Snell & Wilmer is the largest product-liability firm in OC.
Robinson, who has faced Greenfield on eight to 10 cases, calls him “one of the top product liability defense lawyers.”
Other local defenders include Don Ruston of Lewis, D’Amato, Brisbois & Bisgaard; Patrick Duffy of Cooksey, Howard, Martin & Toolen; and the firms of Callahan, McCune & Willis; Haight, Brown & Bonesteel and Cotkin, Collins & Ginsburg.
Perhaps unique in OC is the air of respect within the local circle of product-liability attorneys.
“The lawyers on the defense in Orange County are far more civil and respectful,” compared with other areas, Robinson said.
Defense attorney Rothrock said that although the litigation atmosphere in OC is more tense than in the ’70s and ’80s, he still finds most of the OC plaintiff attorneys to be “reasonably courteous.”
Civility aside, one of the more contentious issues in the product-liability field is the inflation of judgments into the billion-dollar range, which some defense attorneys think is outrageous.
William Ginsburg of Cotkin, Collins & Ginsburg, says the verdicts are exorbitantly high. He emphasizes the long-standing defense complaint that juries often sympathize with the plaintiff instead of determining who’s at fault.
Greenfield says one of the reasons the verdicts have gotten higher is because the plaintiff attorneys have become more sophisticated.
Robinson, on the other hand, argues that 90% of the cases are settled and never reach a jury verdict, so when the verdict is high, the jury is saying the corporation misbehaved and deserves to be punished.
“We don’t see that everyday,” he said.
But the big verdicts get attention because “the press wants stuff that sells,” while those that are settled without punitive damages go unnoticed.
And, Robinson noted, the eye-popping jury awards often are reduced by the trial judge or on appeal.
For instance, Robinson’s landmark $128 million Ford Pinto judgment was cut by the judge to $6.6 million. His recent high-profile judgment against General Motors was chopped from $4.9 billion to $1.1 billion.
But that’s still plenty to keep him and the other plaintiff attorneys in business. So there’ll always be work for the defenders, too.
On the following pages is a closer look at some of the top product-liability attorneys practicing in OC. n
