Laura F. Sedrish

After Army Reserve soldier Kenneth Rhee got locked out of his apartment, he attempted to gain access by lowering himself from the building’s rooftop to the apartment balcony. He ultimately slipped and fell three stories, suffering a severe spinal cord injury.

Rhee’s catastrophic injury case was rejected by multiple firms before Sedrish took it upon herself to find liability in the accident. By arguing that the owner and property manager of the building should have kept a hatch to the roof locked, Sedrish obtained the full policy of $2 million for her client. Kenneth Rhee v. Novak Family Properties, et al., 19STCV18844 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed May 31, 2019).

“The liability was very slim, but I didn’t give up,” she said. “I found a liability argument and then I got the insurance company emotionally invested; the insurance adjuster came to the deposition and she was crying.”

Sedrish has obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements and verdicts on behalf of injured clients. Shortly before joining Jacoby & Meyers in 2018, she secured an $11 million settlement for a plaintiff who was paralyzed in a trucking accident.

Last year, Sedrish obtained a $5.5 million settlement for William Brighton, a homeless man in his seventies with a history of drug abuse and personal struggles. He suffered significant injuries after being hit by a car, but the settlement enabled him to enter a nursing facility that will provide care for the rest of his life, Sedrish said. William Joseph Brighton v. Lynn Hiromi Onishi, et al. 19STCV03102 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Jan. 29, 2019)

Sedrish noted that court delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have led insurance companies to either make lowball offers or stall for time. “The longer trials are being pushed and things are being continued, the harder it is to settle cases for fair value, because the threat of trial is not looming,” she said.

Sedrish is a member of many legal associations and spends substantial time mentoring young attorneys, especially women. She was also one of the founding board members of the Greenway Arts Alliance, a nonprofit organization that launched the popular Melrose Trading Post more than two decades ago.

— Mark Armao