Eric M. George

Longtime litigator George grew up wanting to be a doctor. But as the responsibilities of the medical profession became more clear, he started having second thoughts.

“The more I thought about blood and guts,” George said, “the more I opted for a different career path.”

The Browne George Ross LLP partner was a fan of debate in high school and had an affinity for problem solving, two skills he said serve him well today.

“I discovered that I had a temperament and interests that were more attuned to being a litigator than a doctor,” he conceded. “Don’t hold it against me.”

After completing his law degree at Georgetown University Law Center, George clerked for federal judge D. Lowell Jensen in the Northern District of California and later worked as deputy legal affairs secretary for Gov. Pete Wilson. He joined his current firm in 2000 after serving for a time as counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.

“We handle everything from standard business disputes and real estate to constitutional law, art law and insurance matters,” he said of his litigation boutique today. “And that’s just a fraction of the subject matters we cover.”

George recently wrapped up work on a case that spanned more than 12 years, earning a jury verdict for attorneys Steven Wyner and Marcy Tiffany. The duo were sued in 2006 by former client Deborah Pope, who claimed she hadn’t been paid for roughly $300,000 in wages and fees for her paralegal services. Only months earlier, Wyner and Tiffany had secured a $6.7 million settlement for Porter and her husband in a lawsuit against the Manhattan Beach Unified School District and the California Department of Education for allegedly failing to provide adequate resources to their learning disabled child. Porter et al. v. Bd Trst Manhattan et al., oo-CV-08402 (C.D. Cal., filed Aug. 7, 2000).

Ultimately the jury found Porter was never an employee of the Wyner & Tiffany firm, and while the jury did decide the attorneys breached their fiduciary duties to Porter and her husband, it ruled the couple was not harmed and as a result due no monetary damages.

“At the end of the day,” George said, “there’s no question in my mind that the jury did see what the case was all about, which amounts to one word — greed.”

— Shane Nelson