Elise R. Sanguinetti

When protests and calls for racial justice followed the death of George Floyd, Sanguinetti thought about how she could contribute as a lawyer. Then she thought about the trouble she was having removing a “whites-only” restrictive covenant from the homeowners’ agreement on her house, which she and her husband were selling.

Sanguinetti had tried and failed to remove it when they bought the house in 2000. A later statutory change permitted striking the provision, but it took her four attempts to accomplish.

Since then, she has been working to draw attention to the Jim-Crow era provisions, which are buried in thousands of home purchase agreements around the state. As an example, one covenant Sanguinetti found declares that only people “of the Caucasian race” can occupy or use the property except for “domestic servants.”

She has sought press coverage of the issue and highlighted it on social media and the Next Door website. Her goal is to encourage homeowners to check their title documents. If they ask, she helps them remove the covenants, a cumbersome process that every county handles differently.

She also backs legislation to require county clerks to strike the provisions automatically.

A prominent tort plaintiffs’ attorney, Sanguinetti was the 2018-19 president of the national trial lawyers bar group, the American Association for Justice. In that role, she actively supported federal legislation to ban mandatory arbitration agreements in consumer contracts.

In her practice, she has sued counties over deaths and injuries in their jails several times. In a current case, Sanguinetti represents the family of a man who hanged himself in Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail after he was taken off suicide watch and moved from a safety cell. Masterson v. County of Alameda, 3:19-cv-01625, (N.D. Cal., filed March 28, 2019).

Current cases include two against Tesla, one not yet filed involving an airbag injury. In the second, the driver burned to death after a crash. McCarthy v. Tesla, (Sta. Clara Sup. Ct., 19CV358560, filed Oct. 4, 2019).

Sanguinetti also is co-lead counsel in a potential class action against Genentech accusing the drugmaker of selling a cancer medication in overly large vials, causing purchasers to pay for medicine they must throw away. Williamson v. Genentech Inc., 20-cv-06695, (N.D. Cal., filed Sept. 24, 2020).

— Don DeBenedictis