Mike Arias

LOS ANGELES - Mike Arias is a prominent tort plaintiffs' attorney whose cases range from electric scooter injuries to employment mass actions and high-profile sexual assault class actions.

He says he is concerned about how dramatic events over the last several years have caused many people to become politically and socially polarized. "You have to wonder what that polarization may ... do in the jury room," he said. "I think trial lawyers have to be cognizant of that." So far, he said he hasn't seen an impact on jury verdicts, however.

In fact, the polarization may make it easier for plaintiffs' attorneys to identify extremely conservative potential jurors during voir dire, he said.

Two years of pandemic lockdowns may also help the plaintiffs bar, Arias added. Now jurors know what it's like to be housebound. "I think people can understand now when somebody says something has affected them psychologically because we know, when ... you don't go out for a year, what that does to you."

That new understanding affects not just jurors, but people who make decisions on settling cases, Arias said. He thinks it was a factor in his achieving a record-setting $38.5 million confidential settlement earlier this summer for a martial arts student made a quadriplegic by another student who delivered repeated illegal blows during an event and fractured the victim's neck.

Last year, as plaintiffs' co-liaison counsel, Arias helped achieve the $852 million settlement from USC for 710 women sexually assaulted by school gynecologist George Tyndall. Earlier this year, he also was among the plaintiffs' attorneys who obtained a $243.6 million settlement from UCLA for more than 200 women molested by a gynecologist there.

He said he is especially proud of those cases because they will cause other institutions and businesses to re-evaluate how they monitor employees and deal with complaints. "I think of the societal impact they're going to have across the country."