Douglas N. Silverstein 

Douglas N. Silverstein is committed to advancing civility among attorneys. He is, among other bar leadership positions, a member of the California Civility Task Force.

Last month, the State Bar sent several of the task force's proposals to the state Supreme Court for possible inclusion in the state's Rules of Professional Conduct. One would require lawyers to pledge every year to be civil and another would make substantial incivility subject to bar discipline.

Civility "is critically important across the entire legal profession," Silverstein said, who is the only plaintiffs' employment attorney on the task force. "It makes the administration of justice better for all participants."

In his own practice, Silverstein said he uses a collaborative approach with his own cases when he can. In each case, he is trying to solve a problem for his client while the defense lawyers are doing the same for theirs. "This is no different than any other business issue that the company has to confront."

In January last year, he reached a $1.75 million settlement for a company's chief technology officer who was fired after being admitted to the hospital twice for heart problems. Then in April, he brought in a $1.8 million prelitigation settlement for someone who ended up having drunk sex in the CFO's car after going to dinner with him.

In May, he settled what he described as a "woke discrimination" lawsuit prelitigation against a major studio. Silverstein said he's handled a number of matters in which someone is discriminated against for supporting "an unpopular political view or ... if they're not diverse enough. It's happening. We're seeing it."

Of course, sometimes, cases don't settle and must be tried. Silverstein claims a unique distinction for his trial work. He won punitive damages in all six of his most recent trials in which punitives were at issue. "I'm not aware of any attorney who has done that," he said.

The last of those was before the pandemic. Recently, litigation has meant arbitration.

He is not a fan of the current arbitration system generally. "The state of arbitration law in this country [amounts to] a complete erosion of the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial."

"We'd much rather be in front of a jury," he added. "But when in Rome, right"?

An arbitrator awarded his client more than $750,000 in January 2022 for failing to accommodate the young woman's disability and then firing her when she accepted employment with another company while on medical leave. Although she only claimed $13,000 in lost wages, the award was large because Silverstein's litigation resulted in the defendant company dropping its illegal requirement that an employee be "100% healed" before returning to work.

He compared it to a Catch-22. "We really had to peel back the layers to get to what was real" in that case, he said.

-- Don DeBenedictis