Deborah Chang 

Deborah Chang kept busy during the COVID era by founding two law firms in May 2020 to handle complex injury and wrongful death cases: Athea Trial Lawyers LLP and Chang Klein LLP. The first combined the forces of six prominent female tort attorneys from around the U.S.

Athea members then voted that each was required to lead her own individual firm. So Chang launched Chang Klein LLP, giving up her of counsel post at the firm now known as Panish Shea Boyle Ravipudi LLP.

“If it weren’t for the pandemic, none of this would have happened,” Chang said. “The forced slowdown made it clear that first, you can work effectively from the comfort of home. And, second, that it’s amazing what you can get done when you’re not on the 405 for four hours a day.”

Chang also found time to run Consumer Attorneys of California and the Los Angeles chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates; she’s now the immediate past president of both groups.

In mid-May, she was preparing for a major wrongful death and elder abuse trial targeting a hospital for neglecting a 71-year-old patient who died of sepsis. Dobbert v. Los Robles Hospital, 56-2019-00525298-CU-MM-VTA (Ventura Co. Super. Ct., filed Feb. 22, 2019).

“That place is so notoriously understaffed that in focus groups, people said their greatest fear is passing out and waking up in Los Robles Hospital,” Chang said.

In January, Chang won $10.55 million for the family of Esther Nakajjigo, a young Ugandan woman who was killed on an anniversary trip at Arches National Park in Utah when an unsecured road gate arm swung into traffic, pierced the car in which she was riding with her husband and decapitated her. Michaud et al. v. U.S., 2:21-cv-00722 (D. Utah, filed Dec. 10, 2021).

The federal government acknowledged fault and causation by the U.S. Park Service. Chang’s task was to argue the Federal Tort Claims Act matter to a federal judge, who would award damages. The case was assigned to Senior U.S. District Judge Bruce S. Jenkins, now 96, a President Jimmy Carter appointee.

“We told the story of this shining star of a woman. We brought her to life,” Chang said. Nakajjigo was a reality TV star in Uganda who operated a hospital and worked on social causes. She was attending a U.S. school for entrepreneurs at the time of her death.

“Judge Jenkins was poker-faced throughout, but he was full of energy and wisdom and he understood,” Chang said. The award he granted was the largest federal court wrongful death verdict in Utah history.

— John Roemer