Genie Harrison

Harrison is the president of the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles. In that role, she has spent the past year working to assist the courts and the legal community to continue to operate successfully during the pandemic.

She endeavored to reduce the burden on the Los Angeles Superior Court’s overwhelmed mandatory settlement conference program by recreating it as a virtual program. Over six months and hundreds of hours, she and defense bar leaders and the court “created something that is one of a kind,” Harrison said. “As far as anyone knows, it doesn’t exist anywhere else in the country.”

The website ResolveLawLA.com went live in early July. Judges in most personal injury cases can order parties to use it to schedule and conduct settlement conferences over Zoom before a pair of volunteer lawyers, one from the plaintiffs’ bar and one from the defense. The system can handle five cases each morning and afternoon.

Harrison is also working to expand the association’s diversity and inclusion activity, including putting on an educational program on implicit bias in the fall.

As a litigator, she represents hundreds of women in an employment class action against videogame maker Riot Games. Many of the individual claims within the Riot Games class action are being sent out to arbitration now. “Those are set one after the other after the other,” she said. McCracken v. Riot Games Inc., 18STCV03957 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Nov. 6, 2018)

That litigation involves about 1,000 women who have worked for the “League of Legends” developer, which Harrison described as “a real good-old-boy culture” where women were underpaid and subjected to substantial sexual harassment. “It’s an incredible honor to be representing them, and I’m really looking forward to trying those cases.”

She also represents Harvey Weinstein’s personal assistant in the lone employment lawsuit filed against the disgraced movie mogul. An appeal by brother Robert Weinstein asking out of the case is pending in the New York state appellate court.

Many of Weinstein’s other accusers are pursuing claims from the settlement set up through his company’s bankruptcy. Harrison praised the claims process for giving her clients the ability individually “to share their story about what Harvey did and how it affected them.”

Harrison said that is as important to her as it is to those clients. “My business model is that I put my clients’ interests first.”

— Don DeBenedictis