Oct. 27, 2016
Sanders Roberts & Jewett LLP
See more on Sanders Roberts & Jewett LLPLos Angeles / Litigation
Justin H. Sanders founded the firm in 2008 after working as an associate at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP, as a deputy city attorney in Los Angeles and as a senior associate at Sidley Austin LLP. Reginald Roberts Jr. joined in 2011 from the firm now known as AlvaradoSmith APC. Both men are graduates of Morehouse College and University of Southern California Gould School of Law. Bradley E. Jewett joined in 2014, bringing banking and real estate litigation experience. The firm's attorney roster now is at seven.
Sanders and Roberts soon landed Ford Motor Co. as a major client that assigned them its Orange County warranty litigation, which amounted to 50 to 100 cases annually, Sanders said. "Several attorneys we'd worked with in the past referred Ford to us," he said. "Working at big firms taught me good habits — a good work ethic and good client services experience. What I had to learn when I was on my own were the little important things. At a firm, you would draft a pleading and email it to your secretary to have it filed in court. In your own firm, you need to know which clerk takes which document to which courthouse."
"It was great practicing as a solo," Sanders said. "Starting out, I was very cheap. I learned to save money. I remember I bought a box of 12 pens, and I vowed they'd be the only pens I used that year. And I had printed 1,000 business cards, and I vowed I make three quality pass-outs a day for a year. You can create good energy that way. I got busy pretty quickly, and then I found I needed a lot of help and some people to bounce ideas off of."
Along with Ford, the firm currently represents the Los Angeles Unified School District, the city of Compton, Rising Realty Partners LP, City National Bank, Kia Motors America, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc., the African Methodist Episcopal Church Inc. and the California Institute of Technology.
Sanders Roberts attained two big wins in September. "There was a lot of coffee and not a lot of sleep that month," Sanders said.
A federal jury awarded client Justin Palmer $1.1 million after he was assaulted by two Santa Monica police officers ? handcuffed, thrown to the ground and pepper sprayed. "Mr. Palmer was in a parking lot trying to charge his vehicle. There was confusing signage about whether you had to stop charging at 11 p.m." When officers asked Palmer to leave the lot, he asked why, Sanders said. "They felt challenged and punished him."
The case arose in early 2015, and the timing forced Sanders to make a sensitive judgment about trial strategy. "It was right at the beginning of videos appearing showing African-American men being killed by police across the U.S.," Sanders said. "Mr. Palmer is black, I'm black, so did I think the case was race related?" Sanders said he made a conscious, tactical decision to leave that aspect untouched. "We didn't raise it at all at trial," he said, "even though there was one specific fact that could have indicated a racial issue was at play. After Mr. Palmer was arrested, a man of a different race came in and retrieved his vehicle without challenge. But we had no real evidence of racial animus, and we had plenty of evidence of unreasonable force. At jury selection, several jurors commented that they'd feel uncomfortable if it was a race-based case. We decided we weren't going to speculate." Palmer v. City of Santa Monica, 2:15-cv-06183 (C.D. Cal., filed Aug. 14, 2015).
Also in September, the firm won summary judgment for its defendant client, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, in a disability discrimination case brought by a housing development resident. Roberts was lead counsel. "The housing authority denied him a three-bedroom unit. He was a single tenant," Roberts said. "He said he needed a second bedroom for a health aide, which the authority was willing to grant, and a third bedroom to house his exercise equipment, which went too far." Mengistu v. Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, 2:15-cv-05427 (C.D. Cal., filed July 16, 2015).
"We toil away here, sometimes in obscurity, but we get good results," Roberts said.
— John Roemer
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