Nanci E. Nishimura

Nishimura has long done pro bono work. But after COVID-19 hit, the partner and antitrust attorney with Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy decided it was time to do more.

“A lot of what I’ve done is working with people who have been hurt by the pandemic, a lot of pro bono work,” Nishimura said. “For example, people who had to shut down and couldn’t afford to pay the leases on their businesses.”

She helped one woman renegotiate the sales price of a business she had purchased just before the pandemic, stopping the monthly payments that were driving her out of business. And she spent a lot of time looking over business agreements for various people in need.

“That’s really intimidating for someone who can’t afford a lawyer,” she said. “So I helped.”

She also kept up working with regular clients. She’s represented businesses who discovered the hard way their insurance policies contained pandemic exclusions. She sued a cruise line on behalf of passengers who said they were denied COVID-19 treatment as a pandemic spread onboard. In December, a federal judge named her to the steering committee of the Google class action.

She finished out a term on the Commission of Judicial Performance. She stayed on longer than she otherwise would have to work on the case that saw appeals court Justice Jeffrey W. Johnson removed from the bench over sexual harassment allegations.

Another thing on her mind over the past year was the growing wave of anti-Asian violence. On May 4, she was a moderator at a conference on fighting anti-Asian hate put on by the Attorney General Alliance.

The child of Japanese immigrants who were interned during World War II, Nishimura said she knows too well that anti-Asian racism is not new. While she feels a great deal of solidarity with other Asian-Americans in Northern California, education and work have taken her to places where she didn’t feel as welcome.

“In different parts of the country, I’m treated differently,” she said “In my younger days in Boston, I got spit on. I had rocks thrown at me.”

— Malcolm Maclachlan