Arash Homampour is a trial attorney that represents individuals in catastrophic injury/wrongful death, employment and insurance bad faith matters throughout the State. He was naed one of the top 30 Plaintiff attorneys in 2016 and 2018 in the State by the Los Angeles Daily Journal. He was named CAALA’s 2010 trial attorney of the year and has been nominated as trial attorney of the year every year since 2004. In 2017, he was named the Ventura County Trial Lawyer’s Association as Trial Attorney of the Year. In 2018, he was named the Orange County Trial Lawyer’s Association as it’s product liability Trial Attorney of the Year. In 2007, he was named one of the Top 20 Attorneys Under the Age of 40 by the Los Angeles Daily Journal. From 2005 through the present, he has earned the distinction of being a "Super Lawyer", with the additional recognition since 2010 as one of the top 100 Southern California Attorneys. He also handles appellate work, including successfully briefing and arguing before the California Supreme Court. He also appears as a legal analyst on television.
Courtney Rowley is passionate about personal injury law. Courtney focuses her practice on serving people who have suffered permanent or serious injuries. She is an accomplished trial lawyer with extensive courtroom experience representing victims of serious injuries, wrongful death, traumatic brain injuries, spinal injuries and medical malpractice.
Deborah Chang is a Los Angeles personal injury trial attorney with Athena Lawyers, LLP, where she focuses her practice representing plaintiffs in complex torts, catastrophic injury, wrongful death, product liability, sexual assault/abuse/harassment/discrimination, and business tort cases. She also serves as Of Counsel at Panish Shea & Boyle LLP.
She is known throughout California as one of the few female trial lawyers who actually tries significant cases and obtains some of the largest record verdicts and settlements for her clients. As a leader in the legal community, she serves as a mentor for other women trial lawyers.
Nick Rowley has won, through caring about his clients and justice, hundreds of millions of dollars in record setting verdicts and settlements for injury victims and their families.
Tom Feher is founder and personal injury and product liability trial lawyer with the Feher Law . In 2018, he obtained $39 million in verdicts. He’s worked on hundreds of injury cases with a focus on spine, brain, and catastrophic injuries. At just 36 years old, he’s tried 40 cases and been honored with 2018 CAALA’s Rising Star, 2017 OCTLA’s Young Gun, and 2016 CAOC’s Street Fighter awards. He has given lectures, presentations, and workshops on trying cases throughout the country and on behalf of CAALA, OCTLA, and CASD. He is a board member of CAOC and the Los Angeles Trial Lawyers Charity where he volunteers his time in the community. He is a 2013 graduate of Gerry Spence’s Trial Lawyers College and a 2010 graduate of Pepperdine Law School with a Certificate in Dispute Resolution. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, Philosophy, and Political Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Steve Vartazarian is a trial lawyer involved in trying major catastrophic injury cases with numerous 7 and 8 digits jury verdicts in the past 10 years. His verdicts have accomplished the re-writing of policies and procedures for the County of Los Angeles, other governmental municipalities and several major hospitals in an effort to keep consumers safe. He is a member of ABOTA, is on the board of CAALA, and on the executive committee of LATLC. His most recent recognition was the trial lawyer of the year of CAALA for 2019.
Boris is a founding partner of Abir Cohen Treyzon Salo, LLP where he represents individuals and businesses in complex litigation matters, catastrophic personal injury cases and insurance bad faith. Mr. Treyzon has had a considerable amount of multi-million-dollar verdicts and settlements. He has also successfully defended several cases involving business and contractual disputes. Prior to helping found Abir Cohen Treyzon Salo, LLP, he was a founding partner of Treyzon & Associates. He began his legal career in 1998, as a founding partner at Treyzon & Blank.
Mr. Treyzon is an active member of the Consumer Attorneys of California (CAOC), American Association for Justice (AAJ), as well as Public Justice.
Mr. Treyzon received his Juris Doctor in 1997 from University of La Verne School of Law and is admitted to practice in State Courts of the State of California, as well as US District Court. Boris Treyzon has over 20 years of experience working as an attorney.
Olivier Taillieu is a distinguished and respected trial attorney. He has tried and won multiple jury trials in his prolific career, and has recovered tens of millions of dollars in verdicts and settlements for his clients. He is the chief trial attorney of The Dominguez Firm and handles complex and hard-fought cases.
The founder and lead trial counsel at the Dolan Law Firm, Chris Dolan has successfully tried over 45 cases and settled hundreds of lawsuits. Chris' unparalleled success in civil litigation includes the largest verdict - $61 million - ever in U.S. history for individuals subjected to racial discrimination and harassment in violation of their civil rights. Under Chris' leadership, Dolan Law Firm PC has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars in verdicts and settlement and become one of California's premier plaintiffs' firms serving clients injured due to the fault of another or were discriminated against or treated unfairly in the workplace.
Chris has been recognized by numerous California and national publications as one of the foremost trial lawyers and skilled negotiators in California. The Daily Journal selected Chris twice as one of California's Top 25 Plaintiffs' Lawyers. Chris has served as President of the Consumer Attorneys of California and the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association. Both the CAOC and SFTLA have honored Chris with their trial lawyer of the year awards.
Rahul Ravipudi is a partner at Panish Shea & Boyle LLP and has spent his legal career handling catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases involving commercial vehicles, pedestrians, industrial or construction accidents, utility negligence, dangerous conditions of public and private property as well as victims of sexual abuse and sexual assault. Licensed in California and Nevada, Mr. Ravipudi currently serves as Individual Plaintiffs Co-lead Counsel in the Southern California Fire cases litigation arising out of the Thomas Fire and subsequent debris flows in Montecito, California as well as on the Plaintiffs Executive Committee in the California North Bay Fires litigation and on the Steering Committee in the Blythe bus crash litigation.
Mrs. Odjaghian specializes in catastrophic injury workers compensation litigation with an emphasis on brain injury. She has secured over 150 million dollars in settlements and awards on behalf of catastrophically injured workers with over 30 seven-figure settlements and awards just in the last few years alone. Her trial work has resulted in many published and even notable decisions in the workers compensation arena which have helped injured workers gain access to care industry wide.
Mrs. Odjaghian was recently installed as a board member to the UCLA Department of Neurosurgery and Neurosciences. She also sits on the Board of Governors of the Armenian Bar Association where she serves on their Judicial Evaluation Committee.
Mrs. Odjaghian serves in an advisory capacity to several other governing boards in the brain injury community. Mrs. Odjaghian is a certified course instructor licensed by the California Department of Insurance. She speaks to colleagues, doctors, and nurses on various continuing education panels regarding complex issues surrounding brain injury litigation.
Mrs. Odjaghian was honoured to be named a Super Lawyer in Los Angeles Magazine’s list of Southern California Super Lawyers for the fifth consecutive year in 2019.
Mike Arias is the founding and managing partner of Arias Sanguinetti Wang & Torrijos LLP. He is the 2019 President of Consumer Attorneys of California (CAOC) and Immediate Past-President of Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles (CAALA). In September of 2019, the Daily Journal named Mr. Arias one of the Top 100 Attorneys in California. Earlier in 2019, the Daily Journal named him one of the Top 30 Plaintiff Attorneys in California for the second year in a row. Mr. Arias is also a Member of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA).
During his nearly 35+ year career, he has litigated and tried matters throughout the United States, in both state and federal court. He has served as lead, co-lead or liaison counsel in well over 100 class and mass tort/plaintiff actions, including class actions against some of the largest corporations and institutions in the nation.
He is currently co-liaison counsel for the plaintiffs in the University of Southern California/Dr. George Tyndall litigation on behalf of over 750 women who allege they were sexually abused and assaulted and illicitly photographed by the disgraced USC OB/GYN.
His trial experience is as diverse as the firm’s practice. His last ten trials have included serious personal injury, wrongful death, employment, consumer class actions and mass wage and hour claims. He has recently resolved several class actions and mass plaintiff matters involving antitrust, toxic torts, consumer, wage and hour, environmental issues and product liability. During his career, he has resolved hundreds of matters, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in recovery for the firm’s clients.
Geoffrey S. Wells has succeeded in obtaining impressive recoveries for his clients, resulting in more than 250 multimillion-dollar verdicts and settlements in complex legal actions. These include cases Segal v. Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority – $7.7 million; Willis v. Figueroa – $4 million; motor vehicle injury, Quezada v. Motor Coach Industries – $8.15 million; Mehdipour v. The city of Santa Monica – $2.65 million; wrongful death and Murillo v. U.S. Border Patrol – $3.3 million; a confidential settlement in a wrongful death case of $8.6 million.
Among the high-profile cases that Geoff has handled is a $36.1 million jury verdict he secured on behalf of an injured child in a trial involving negligence by a school bus driver. He was named a Finalist for CAOC’s Consumer Attorney of The Year Award in 2018 for that verdict in the case of Escamilla v. Durham School Services. Geoff also represented plaintiffs in the Santa Monica Farmers Market crash which resulted in a total settlement of over $26 Million.
Additionally, Geoff was one of the lead plaintiffs’ counsels in the Castillo v. DYK case involving multiple plaintiffs which resulted in a combined settlement and jury verdict of over $40 Million. He also succeeded on behalf of the victim in an amusement park ride lawsuit. The plaintiff, who fell approximately 35 feet to the ground when the lap bar on a Ferris wheel ride at Pharaoh’s Lost Kingdom Amusement Park failed, was awarded $4.9 million in a binding arbitration agreement.
A Senior Trial Attorney and team leader at the Dolan Law Firm, Lourdes De Armas represents plaintiffs in catastrophic personal injury, premises liability, sexual abuse, and wrongful death cases. Lourdes is a member of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates (“ABOTA”), where she serves as an Instructor at the Los Angeles ABOTA Jack Daniels Trial School and will serve on the 2020 Executive Committee.
Lourdes’ passion is advocating for her clients in the courtroom. Just in the last couple of years, Lourdes has had multiple trials resulting in several 7 figure jury verdicts. Most notably, Lourdes obtained back to back jury verdicts that were 4x the defendant’s insurance policy with minimal offers going into trial. Dedication to her injured clients and love of the law are what make Lourdes an invaluable member of the team at Dolan Law Firm.
Prior to joining Dolan Law Firm, Lourdes represented clients in a variety of cases from contractual disputes, class actions, amusement park injury, wrongful death litigation, catastrophic personal injury, insurance bad faith, and educational fraud. Most notably, Lourdes represented over 800 inmates of the California Department of Corrections in cases involving inadequate medical care and treatment. She also represented over 22 named plaintiffs and a certified class of former students alleging that the post-secondary school violated the California’s Education Code and consumer protection laws by falsely claiming that school was accredited. The case culminated in a multi-million dollar settlement. Lourdes also represented a client in an amusement park injury case that resulted in a design change in the ride. The case resulted in a confidential settlement.
Lourdes’ work does not end at the courtroom steps. She proudly fights to bring awareness and hopefully change to the issue of sexual assault or harassment by empowering women. She is one of the founding members of the BHBA’s Committee on Empowering Women and serves as an executive member. The Committee was awarded the 2018 Board of Governors Award for the BHBA for their dedication to supporting the professional and personal growth of women through networking, educational programs and mentorship.
Lourdes’ family is originally from Cuba and she is fluent in Spanish.
Spencer Lucas is a trial lawyer at Panish Shea & Boyle and specializes in litigating complex catastrophic personal injury, products liability, wrongful death, sexual abuse and sexual assault cases. Mr. Lucas has extensive experience in cases involving traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries and amputations. He has successfully recovered over $400 million for his clients and prides himself on helping survivors of trauma and their families recover from tragic situations.
Please check back closer to the event date for information about additional speakers!