About 20 Gordon & Rees associates hosted “Family Night” at the Monarch School, a school dedicated to serving K-12 students impacted by homelessness, earlier this month. The lawyers and their families delivered, set up and served dinner at the school, which is a few blocks from the law firm’s downtown office. About 150 students and their parents attended.
Gordon & Rees senior counsel Blake J. Woodhall, a member of the three-lawyer Associates’ Committee, said the group plans several charitable events each year. It decided to contact Monarch because of its outstanding — and growing — educational program for homeless children.
Heather Rosing, has been elected treasurer of The State Bar of California. Rosing is Klinedinst PC’s chief financial officer and chair of the firm’s professional liability practice group. She will serve a one-year term overseeing the State Bar’s budget and internal financial controls, in conjunction with the organization’s CFO. The new officers will be sworn in at the State Bar’s annual meeting in San Jose in mid-October.
“She is an exceptional leader,” said John Klinedinst, founder of the firm.
Following Rosing’s service as president of the San Diego County Bar Association, she was elected to the State Bar’s board of trustees in 2011.
Another Klinedinst lawyer has also recent earned a treasurer seat. San Diego Shareholder and business litigator James Crosby was recently elected treasurer of the San Diego County Bar Association by its board. He will be sworn in this December and begin his one-year term starting in January.
Jonathan Gerber has joined the San Diego office of King & Ballow, one of the country’s best labor law firms. Gerber joins local partners Paul Duvall and Max Nuyen, and more importantly, moves from doing plaintiff’s work to defense work. He’ll also be doing enterprise zone work for clients, which is evidence he’s made the trek across the divide.
Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP scored a prize. Justine M. Phillips joined the firm’s Del Mar office as a member of the firm’s labor and employment practice group. Phillips was formerly with McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP. Phillips focuses her practice on employment litigation and counseling, and commercial litigation. Her employment experience includes advising clients on issues relating to employment agreements, employee handbooks, leave policies, interactive process and reasonable accommodation, wage and hour matters, classification issues, information management, data security, other privacy-related issues, defense of ADA and FEHA disability discrimination claims. Phillips has assisted clients with crisis management and forensic investigations for data breaches, cyberattacks and complex e-discovery issues. She’s smart and personable, too.
Kenneth C. Jones is now a partner at Higgs Fletcher & Mack LLP. Jones specializes in corporate, real estate, finance, business and employment matters as a partner of HFM. Jones was previously with Sullivan Hill Lewin Rez & Engel.
The Gamez Law Firm, opened La Jolla offices earlier this month. The firm, founded by Daniel Gamez, provides legal services to individuals and businesses with minor and significant debt, with a focus on small business, credit card, second mortgage, medical and personal student loan debt settlements. Gamez, who has worked exclusively in consumer debt for eight years, has spent the majority of his career representing some of the country’s largest financial institutions, including Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Wells Fargo & Co. and GMAC Mortgage as a creditor defense litigator. So he knows both sides of a consumer debt dispute.
Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch LLP recently beefed up its intellectual property litigation team. It hired J. Christopher Jaczko as senior counsel at the firm. Jaczko will be part of its IP litigation practice group, working out of the firm’s downtown San Diego office. Jaczko has extensive experience in IP litigation, including patent litigation, trade secret misappropriation claims and a wide variety of complex business litigation. Prior to joining Procopio, Jaczko was the founder of two law firms in San Diego and a partner with Cooley LLP in San Diego, where he litigated IP and business cases. He began his career at Luce Forward Hamilton & Scripps LLP. The firm also hired Bob Sloss, and Mindy Morton to the IP practice firm, which gives Procopio one of the largest groups in the region. Sloss joins the team from Oracle, where he was senior corporate counsel, supervising Oracle’s IP litigation. Morton, formerly with Fenwick, Squire Sanders, and Bergeson LLP, joins the firm’s Menlo Park office.
The Procopio IP team won a significant jury trial for Japanese client Kaneka Corp. in a patent infringement lawsuit. In the lawsuit, Kaneka accused three defendants of infringing two of Kaneka’s U.S. patents relating to flame-retardant polyester fibers use in artificial hair.
The jury found that three products infringed Kaneka’s patents and awarded Kaneka $5.5 million in damages, plus a royalty rate of 10 percent for sales going forward.
Randy Frisch is Vice Chancellor of Business and Administration at National University, and former publisher of the Business Journal. He is licensed to practice law in California, Nevada and Idaho.
