Brian S. Kabateck

The coronavirus pandemic hasn't much slowed the founder of the eponymous Kabateck LLP. Indeed, the most recent past president of the Los Angeles County Bar Association said he reopened his firm's Fifth Street offices May 18.

"A lot of us like being back in an actual law office. Fortunately, we have a lot of space here so everybody can be spread apart," Kabateck said.

While still sheltered as business shut-downs expanded, Kabateck said he worked to get political leaders around the state to include in their directives phrases that would help with future business interruption insurance claims.

"We tried to make sure that closure orders would contain language to make it clear that the orders would cause damage to businesses. San Francisco and Los Angeles and Napa did it, and we had some success elsewhere."

Kabateck said he expects massive litigation over insurers' denial of claims by business owners closed in the virus' wake. "No insurance company has paid a single claim," he added. "Yet 10 to 20% of all policies do not have virus exclusion clauses. We have about 100 clients in multiple states who will contest those denials. There's an effort to create an MDL," federal multidistrict litigation, "but I don't know what the industry wants to do about that."

Among his clients set to protest the denial of their business interruption claim is the Western Diocese of the Armenian Church, which has a policy that specifically covers communicable diseases. "I don't know how their insurers are going to get out of that," he said. "If they intended to exclude a pandemic, they should have said so in the contract."

Kabateck last September negotiated a global settlement valued at more than $57 million for 350 mobile home park residents in Long Beach. The deal came a year after a jury, following an 11-week trial, awarded $39.5 million to a group of 30 residents and in the wake of Kabateck's plans to sue further on behalf of others at the park. The park was built on a former dump site; the homeowners alleged the management failed to keep the land livable. Homes were sinking into the ground, sewer lines were breaking and land rent prices rose 50% over three years, the suit alleged. Acosta v. Friendly Village Mobile Associates, BC591412 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed April 14, 2017).

"My winning argument was that this is a place where working-class people live in an era when affordable housing is an issue," Kabateck said. "And they are entitled to decent living conditions. And the conditions we showed in court simply outraged the jury."

-- John Roemer