Jane Doe v. Steven Rebagliati (sic) et al.
Santa Clara County Superior Court,
Hon. Aaron Perksy Presiding,
Verdict: April 6, 2011.
A Santa Clara County jury found in favor of Mr. Nevin’s client who had been accused of multiple counts of sexual assault. Pre-trial legal motions began on February 2, 2011 and the verdict was reached on April 6, 2011. The plaintiff asked the jury to award $5,000,000.00 in damages against Mr. Nevin’s client after the jury heard weeks of explosive testimony in an often packed courthouse. Known sometimes as “The Duke Lacrosse Case of the West” this case arose out of a post-game party at the house of one of the players on the De Anza Men’s Baseball Team. “Jane Doe,” then aged seventeen, claimed that she had been “gang raped” by multiple members of the team. Her settlement demand before trial was $9 million. The jury was unanimous (12-0) on every sexual assault charge in favor of Mr. Nevin’s client.
See expanded version of this case Press: No Defendants Found Liable in De Anza Rape Trial, No Damages Awarded
Tracey Kaplan & Tracey Seipel, San Jose Mercury News, 4/7/2011 Courtrooms Now Aglow With High-tech Methods for Telling Better Visual Tale Tracey Kaplan,
San Jose Mercury News, 4/29/2011 Jury Faces Tough Task in De Anza Gang-Rape Civil Trial
Tracey Kaplan,
San Jose Mercury News, 3/22/2011 De Anza Students Not Liable in Rape Case
Karina Rusk, KGO- ABC 7, 4/7/2011
Filtration Development Company vs Greene and Parr, Marin County Superior Court, 2010 Mr. Nevin successfully substituted into an ongoing trial in the place of Cooley Godward Kronish LLP of San Francisco then being tried in Marin County before Judge Verna Adams. This highly interesting case involved claims of trade secrets, breach of fiduciary duty, intellectual property, minority shareholder rights, and breach of contract. The exposure in this case was between $20 and $30 Million.
Dr. Steven Dinstell and Sarah Lynn Dinstell vs Basalite Concrete Products, Contra Costa County Superior Court, 2009 This case was one of the first jury trials (there was no published case similar to this in California) where the trial court found that product salespeople at a tradeshow had a duty to refrain from making misstatements to tradeshow attendees about the ability of “recommended contractors” to install their products. Verdict: $519,000 to buyers of Basalite’s retaining wall products for their home in Alamo. (10-2 jury verdict). Three days before jury selection defense counsel had a “stress related” event necessitating the substitution of a team of very talented defense trial attorneys from Archer Norris of Walnut Creek.
Stoneridge Homeowners Association vs. Saddleback Homeowners Association San Francisco County Superior Court, 2008
Nuisance
A unanimous San Francisco jury rejected the claims of approximately 90 plaintiffs who were suing Mr. Nevin’s clients, the Saddleback Homeowners Association. Saddleback was comprised of about 280 Daly City and San Francisco Homeowners. The plaintiffs claimed that Mr. Nevin’s clients were responsible for over $20,000,000 in damages as a result of years of rock slides from their property onto the property of the plaintiffs. Three law separate law firms, financed by Fireman’s Fund Insurance, teamed up to try the case against Mr. Nevin. Their pretrial demand was for $11,000,000 to which Mr. Nevin offered $10,000. The jury was unanimous in the first hour of their deliberations and concluded their formal deliberations in fewer than four hours.
Computer Training Institute vs. American College International, Alameda County, 2006
Unfair Competition A unanimous Alameda County jury awarded Mr. Nevin’s clients $3.2 million in compensatory damages and $1.65 million in punitive damages following several months in trial. Mr. Nevin’s clients were being pursued by a competing high tech vocational school in Silicon Valley who was demanding millions in damages based on claims of breach of contract. Prior to the start of trial, the defendants were demanding that Mr. Nevin’s clients pay them $1.5 million in damages. Mr. Nevin offered them nothing and a jury found that the defendants had defrauded Mr. Nevin’s clients by “clear and convincing” evidence.
Susoeff vs. O'Donoghue Construction, San Francisco County, 1992
Construction Defect and Accounting Fraud Mr. Nevin defended a San Francisco construction company who had built condominiums on Protero Hill. The developer plaintiffs were seeking millions in damages. Mr. Nevin was called in on the eve of trial to defend the construction company, without the benefit of any pretrial discovery or any experts. The plaintiffs’ pretrial demand for settlement was $1.5 million. Mr. Nevin successfully defended the accounting fraud and construction case in a jury trial that lasted most of the summer. A unanimous jury exonerated the construction company and actually awarded Mr. Nevin's client $300,000 in damages against the plaintiffs.
Bunch vs. Doughboy Pool, Glen County, 2001
Products Liability Courtroom observers have indicated that this verdict is a state record for personal injury verdicts north of Sacramento all the way to the Oregon border. Mr. Nevin was initially retained by Farmers Insurance to defend their insured, the supplier of above ground swimming pools and their component parts. When Mr. Nevin was assigned this case, his new client had not responded to a serious product liability lawsuit where a young girl was rendered a C-3 quadriplegic because of a dive that she made into the shallow waters of a Doughboy swimming pool. Mr. Nevin’s client actually had a $20,000,000 default judgment rendered against it. A detailed case summary can be found at Bunch v. Hoffinger Industries, 123 Cal. App. 4th 1278 (2004). By the time the case had gone to verdict, Mr. Nevin’s client had been relieved of the default judgment and was prosecuting an indemnity case against the product manufacturer. He teamed up with the plaintiff and tried the liability aspect of plaintiff’s case (along with that of his client) against the product manufacturer (Doughboy Swimming Pools) attempting to prove that the manufacture had failed to affix adequate warning labels onto their pool liner. The Glen County jury rendered a finding that the product was defective (11-1) in less than two hours, and returned a verdict of $16,000,000 against the manufacturer. With prejudgment interest, court costs the amount due was nearly $20,000,000, which was ironic since that amount was very close to the deficit that Mr. Nevin’s client faced when he entered the case. The largest verdict in Glen County, prior to this one, was for $150,000. This was the largest verdict ever against the largest supplier of swimming pools in the world and they immediately went into bankruptcy to avoid paying the verdict. Several years later, a massive settlement was reached that benefited the young woman with a special needs trust and the Court of Appeal in Sacramento issued a unanimous affirmance of the verdict and clarified the duty to warn children of the hazards of dangerous products in California.
Hartwick vs. Woodside Homeowners Association, Sacramento County, 2005
Premises Liability A Sacramento jury was discharged following the plaintiffs’ repeated suicide attempts during trial. The plaintiff, Mr. Hartwick claimed that his broken back was attributable to the unsafe conditions at one of Sacramento’s largest condominium associations. When Mr. Nevin was assigned this case to defend the homeowner’s association, his client was facing “terminating sanctions” for destroying the deck that the plaintiff had fallen from on St. Patrick’s Day as he was attempting to gain access to a locked condominium. The court decided that the only fair way to deal with the loss of critical evidence was to instruct the jury that they were to consider as a proven fact that the balcony deck (from which the plaintiff had fallen) was “rotten, dangerous and not build to code nor was it code compliant” at the time of the plaintiffs’ fall. The plaintiff’s case was going poorly from the outset, and the day before the plaintiff was set to testify, he decided to take his own life rather than be cross examined. After several weeks in trial, the plaintiff ended up in an acute care ward of a local psychiatric hospital and his case was declared to be a mistrial.
Samimi vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, Alameda County 1998
Railroad Crossing Wrongful Death An Alameda County jury awarded Mr. Nevin's clients $1.8 million after finding Southern Pacific liable for failing to install crossing gates at a high speed urban railroad crossing in Fremont, California. The sixteen year old son of Mr. and Mrs. Samimi was killed as he was delivering pizza for his parent's pizza parlor. The case is unique in California because it was one of the few, if only, verdicts that compensated parents for the economic damages that they would have received from a minor. A cultural anthropologist testified that first born sons in the Afghan community, were expected to provide support and shelter their parents once the son reached adulthood. Courtroom observers consider this to be a state record for economic damages for the loss of a child in wrongful death cases.
United States vs. Taylor, U.S. District Court, San Francisco, 1985
Copyright Infringement Reputed to be the first criminal prosecution in the country brought by the United Sates Justice Department involving computer software, Mr. Nevin’s client was charged with multiple counts of software piracy and reverse engineering of computer hardware. The defendant was a colorful, high tech wizard who was arrested and then convicted for having decoded court reporting software and hardware prior to inserting his own copyright onto the original manufacture’s hardware and software. The case is unique as it required substantial proof on all elements of software engineering and manufacturing at a time when computers were just beginning to make inroads into our everyday lives.
Thornton vs. Prasad, Alameda County, 1998
Excessive Force, Assault and Battery This improbable outcome (a unanimous defense verdict in Berkeley) came after many trial days where the jury heard testimony that the plaintiff had been beaten and ejected from a local nightclub by the club’s very large bouncers. Known as a liberal venue for injured plaintiffs, this Berkeley jury took less than 3 hours to reach a unanimous defense verdict, deciding that, although they did not condone physical ejectment of patrons, this particular patron was dealt with fairly since he had instigated the mêlée and was drunk and deserved to be thrown into the street. >> Additional Representative Trials, Cases and Results
