James R. Rosen

El Segundo

Professional Responsibility, Ethics, and Legal Malpractice

James R. Rosen, a defense lawyer, founded the firm in 2006 and was joined by plaintiffs’ attorney Ryan D. Saba a few years later. Underscoring its success— Rosen said he’s never lost a case for a defendant— the shop recently moved from Beverly Hills to new quarters in the South Bay.

“It’s a nice change in scenery,” Rosen said. “Now I’m a 10- to 15-minute bike ride from work. We’re growing. We have a lot of business and we’re looking to hire new people.”

His boutique handles high-profile professional liability claims plus employment and harassment cas-es and business torts. Rosen also provides expert witness testimony and opinions regarding attor-ney ethics, standard of care and responsible billing practices in legal malpractice and breach of fi-duciary duty matters. In September 2021, he was elected vice president of the Los Angeles Chap-ter of the American Board of Trial Advocates.

Client J-M Manufacturing Co. Inc., the world’s largest distributor of polyvinyl chloride piping prod-ucts, retained Rosen for a trial after the state Supreme Court reversed an arbiter’s million-dollar fee award to its former law firm.

It was a case that riveted many in the professional responsibility field. The firm, Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP, had been disqualified by a conflict from representing J-M in a $2 billion “bet the company” federal qui tam action filed by scores of municipal utilities, one of which was also a Sheppard Mullin client. Following the disqualification, J-M resisted paying the balance of Shep-pard Mullin’s massive legal bill, but the firm prevailed in an arbitration required by its retainer agreement.

The high court nullified the agreement and all resulting proceedings and sent the case down for a trial on Sheppard Mullin’s quantum meruit claim, a sum that had reached about $4 million. J-M brought on Rosen. “Sheppard sued J-M over the bill, even though it had been disqualified, which was unwise,” Rosen said. “What drove S-M was that Sheppard had known about the conflict, and that’s not cool.” Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP v. J-M Manufacturing Co. Inc., YC067332 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed June 21, 2012).

“We prepared a trial presentation that was an enhanced PowerPoint with video and excerpted doc-uments, and we presented it at a pretrial mediation,” Rosen said. “Our position was persuasive enough to reach a confidential and advantageous settlement.”

Rosen ranks the J-M win among his top three, which include a $38.5 million jury verdict for his plaintiff clients in a 2005 malpractice case. “It was a hot topic at all the professional responsibility seminars,” he said. “In terms of importance and principle, it was one of our biggest.”

-- John Roemer