V. James DeSimone

Civil Rights & Employment

V. James DeSimone practices plaintiff-side civil rights and employment law at the firm he founded in 2015, V. James DeSimone Law. He’s been an attorney since 1985.

“We’ve just had two years on the sidelines, on ice, during Covid and I’m very grateful to be about to bring our skills back to the courtroom and get justice for our clients again,” he said.

In April, DeSimone won a $1.5 million damages verdict against the Orange County coroner’s office for having misidentified the body of a man found dead on a sidewalk in Fountain Valley. The coroner gave the remains to the Kerrigan family, telling them they were those of their son, Frankie, allegedly identified through fingerprints.

The family held a funeral and a wake, unaware they had buried another man’s body. Eleven days after the funeral, Frankie, who was homeless, came to the home of one of the pallbearers. DeSimone sued for negligent misrepresentation on behalf of Frankie’s father and sister. Kerrigan v. County of Orange, 30-2018-00973047 (O.C. Super. Ct., filed Feb. 13, 2018).

“The fingerprints were not checked properly,” DeSimone said. The resulting bureaucratic snafu was “fraught with human error, and it impacted the family substantially. The father’s grief was evident to the jury.”

In February, DeSimone negotiated a $3.5 million settlement with the state prison system on behalf of the mother and the teenage son of a woman beaten to death by her cellmate at the California Institution for Women in Chino. Shaylene Graves was murdered within earshot of corrections officers after weeks of escalating conflict with her cellmate, DeSimone said. Graves had just six weeks left on her sentence for her involvement in a 2008 robbery in which she drove the getaway car. Graves v. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation et al., 5:17-cv- 01086 (C.D. Cal., filed May 31, 2017).

“Any time you have a prison death, getting testimony about what happened is a challenge,” DeSimone said. “We had inmates willing to cooperate in an internal investigation, but the prison administration wants to keep that sealed. We are glad of the settlement, but we are still pushing for the result of the investigation because we also want to achieve reforms.”

When an auto parts company fired a saleswoman who had cancer, DeSimone picked up the resulting wrongful termination lawsuit when it ended in a mistrial due to the woman’s death. He then persuaded the court to appoint her children as substitute plaintiffs and won a $500,000 punitive damages award atop a $15,000 economic damages judgment, which the defense challenged as unconstitutionally large.

A state appellate panel affirmed, finding the ratio between the actual harm to the woman and the punitives was an acceptable 3.5:1. Rubio v. CIA Wheel Group et al., B300021 (2nd DCA, op. filed April 15, 2021).

“We set the precedent that big ratios can occur in exceptional cases,” DeSimone said.

– John Roemer