Experience Matters
When your trial does not result in the desired outcome for either you or the opposition, an appeal usually follows. Lurie, Zepeda, Schmalz, Hogan & Martin’s attorneys apply over one hundred years of collective experience representing appellants and respondents. We practice regularly before the California Court of Appeal and have argued before the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and California and Utah Supreme Courts. Several of our attorneys are licensed to practice before the United States Supreme Court.
Our lawyers were lead counsel or participated in the following precedent-setting, published appellate decisions:
Obtained peremptory writ of mandamus from Court of Appeal where trial judge had erroneously ordered arbitrator to decide a motion to expunge lis pendens, even though such relief was beyond arbitrator’s jurisdiction.
Obtained peremptory writ of mandamus from Court of Appeal where trial court had erroneously ordered case into arbitration. After remand to trial court, defeated commercial bank defendant’s motion to compel alternative dispute resolution on grounds of waiver, thus allowing client’s extensive claims for lender liability to proceed to jury trial.
Achieved unanimous decision in client’s favor in Semtek International Incorporated v. Lockheed Martin Corporation, 531 U.S. 497 (2001), a decision ranked by Harvard Law Review as one of the top 15 for that Supreme Court session and now required reading in virtually every law school’s civil procedure class. After Semtek’s breach of contract claim and various business torts against Lockheed Martin were dismissed in federal court under California’s statute of limitations, client re-filed in Maryland, which had a longer statute of limitations. The Maryland court also dismissed the case, interpreting the Federal Rules to require that the California dismissal be treated as if it were on the merits rather than a procedural statute of limitations dismissal. While unsuccessfully pursuing relief in Maryland’s appellate courts, engineered and preserved arguments that allowed client to obtain U.S. Supreme Court review. Those arguments were well-received by the Supreme Court, resulting in a 9-0 reversal and reversal of numerous federal appellate holdings to the surprise of nearly all leading legal scholars.
