Litigation
Jun. 15, 2002
Coming to the Rescue
Top 30 Women Litigators - Edith R. Matthai - It's stressful enough litigating against attorneys. Imagine having to represent them, a specialty of Los Angeles attorney Edith R. Matthai's.
Edith R. Matthai
It's stressful enough litigating against attorneys. Imagine having to represent them, a specialty of Los Angeles attorney Edith R. Matthai's.
"I get calls from lawyers going nuts because they're getting sued," Matthai of Robie & Matthai says.
Once they recover from the initial shock, many can deal logically with a legal malpractice claim, she says. But not all bow to reason.
"I've had a few difficult situations," Matthai, 51, says. "There are lawyers who simply want to criticize everything that's done."
But even the most critical client can't gripe about a defense verdict, and she's had noteworthy ones.
Late last year, she won a case on behalf of a law firm accused of failing to tell its client, a jewelry company, that an arbitrator presiding over its case may have harbored a bias against the company, resulting in a $1.7 million award against it.
On a recent appeal, she successfully argued that Code of Civil Procedure Section 425.16 permits a special motion to strike a malicious prosecution claim. Jarrow Formulas Inc. v. LaMarche, 97 Cal.App.4th 1 (March 25, 2002).
Next month, the Hastings College of the Law graduate will ascend to the vice presidency of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. She serves as a director of the American Board of Trial Advocates. And she's immediate past president of the Association of Southern California Defense Counsel.
She's come a long way from her hometown of Taft, near Bakersfield.
"It was a good place to grow up as long as you could leave," she jokes.
Eron Yehuda
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