Carolyn J. Kubota

As a former assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, Carolyn J. Kubota puts 12 years of prosecutorial experience behind her commercial litigation and white collar defense practice at Covington & Burling LLP.

"As a prosecutor, I got to do lots of trials on the criminal side," she said. She served as deputy chief of the major frauds section before relocating to O'Melveny & Myers LLP. She moved to Covington in 2017.

That background could be useful as she takes a co-lead position representing the County of Los Angeles in its investigation of contracting policies in the wake of federal bribery indictments facing a former supervisor. The county announced her appointment in early January 2022, adding that a forensic auditing firm will assist in the investigation.

The county's contracting policies came under a spotlight after then-Supervisor Mark Ridley- Thomas was indicted on bribery charges late last year. He was in office from 2008 to 2020 and allegedly steered high-dollar contracts to the USC School of Social Work in exchange for $100,000 plus graduate school admission on a full scholarship for his son. Ridley-Thomas has denied wrongdoing.

Kubota's probe is in its early stages. "It'll take a year," she predicted. "The county wants to understand what went wrong and whether there are changes and improvements to be made."

Last year, Kubota secured a significant win at the state Supreme Court as co-lead of a Covington team serving as national litigation counsel for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee. Former taekwondo athletes claimed that the USOPC was responsible for sexual abuse at non- Olympic events by a former coach, who has now been convicted, and who was not employed or controlled by USOPC. Brown et al. v. USA Taekwondo et al., S259216 (SCOCAL, op. filed April 1, 2021).

The high court affirmed lower court dismissals of the USOPC for the plaintiffs' failure to adequately allege a special relationship that gave rise to a special duty to protect.

"There had been a lot of confusion in the case law over the duty to protect and its application to minor plaintiffs," Kubota said. "We located what we thought was the cleanest and best standard, extended it and applied it to this case in our argument."

The justices largely adopted the reasoning behind the Covington team's position.

Numerous other cases are pending in which athletes contend that the USOPC should be held liable for abuse by criminal wrongdoers whom the USOPC did not employ or control.

"It was a red-letter day when we got the decision, and we had a really happy client, because this is a big issue for them."

- John Roemer