Litigation
Jun. 15, 2002
Cycling On
Top 30 Women Litigators - Christine D. Spagnoli - Attorney Christine D. Spagnoli's preferred method of travel when she takes a vacation is to ride a bicycle hundreds of miles through exotic locales.
Christine D. Spagnoli
Attorney Christine D. Spagnoli's preferred method of travel when she takes a vacation is to ride a bicycle hundreds of miles through exotic locales.
One could surmise that her aversion to driving is the effect of the many automobile product liability cases she has taken to trial.
But Spagnoli says the real reason is that it allows her to get away from her busy daily routine.
"I took up bike riding about 20 years ago, mostly because it gives me an opportunity to get completely away from the lawyer world," Spagnoli, 45, says.
Spagnoli's "lawyer world" has been a successful one ever since she graduated from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles in 1986 and became a law clerk for attorney Bruce Broillet, name partner with Santa Monica's Greene, Broillet, Panish & Wheeler. Today, she is a partner with the firm.
"I went straight to the firm and have been here ever since," she says. "I ended up in the best spot you could end up in if you had any desire to be a trial lawyer. It just sort of gets in your blood."
Last July, Spagnoli won the case of which she is most proud: A jury awarded her client $21 million after his ladder hit a Southern California Edison power line while he was picking avocados, electrocuting him. Kimball v. Southern California Edison, BC210020 (L.A. Super. Ct., verdict July 13, 2001).
Lately, Spagnoli has been working on automobile product liability cases, including many Ford and Firestone cases across the country.
"I think there aren't a lot of women who gravitate toward auto design, so I feel there's an advantage to having a woman lawyer in these cases," she says.
Spagnoli is president of the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles and was named the Most Outstanding Young Trial Lawyer of 2001 by the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, New Lawyers Division.
Christina Landers
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