Stephanie E. Charlin 

Stephanie E. Charlin is a partner at Kabateck LLP, a plaintiff-side boutique specializing in personal injury, insurance bad faith, wrongful death and mass torts. During her seven years at the firm, she led a litigation team that recovered more than $169 million for homeowners and small business owners who suffered property damage from wildfires.

Charlin grew up singing and dancing at summer camps to the point where her family predicted she’d have a legal career. “You have a mouth on you, you’ll be a lawyer,” she frequently heard. It didn’t hurt that she was raised in a home not far from the Gary A. Dordick household, and Charlin became friends with the children of the prominent trial lawyer.

“I saw how much fun Gary and his family had. He gave me a job when I was in college as a file clerk at his firm and he encouraged me to go to law school,” Charlin said.

During her time at Loyola Law School, Charlin worked as a law clerk at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office. “I ended up in major crimes, and I realized that criminal law wasn’t for me,” she said. Instead, she landed at the Kabateck firm.

Charlin spoke in early September after she’d returned from interviewing clients in Maui who were victims of the devastating August wildfire that destroyed Lahaina.

“A very emotional weekend,” she said. “This is a very special community filled with people who love their culture and each other.”

Charlin knows the legal territory. This year, after two years of grueling settlement talks, she obtained payouts totaling nearly nine figures for victims of the devastating 2018 Woolsey Fire in Los Angeles and Ventura counties that killed three, destroyed 1,643 structures and forced 285,000 to evacuate.

She worked closely with the firm’s 100-homeowner and small business-owner clients, meeting each personally and preparing detailed day-in-the-life video presentations to show defendant Southern California Edison as she negotiated settlements. State investigators concluded that it was the utility’s equipment that caused the blaze. Woolsey Fire Cases , JCCP5000 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Jan. 17, 2019).

“We met personally. They feel like family,” Charlin said. “I went to their homes, saw their losses, kept in touch. It was an enormous amount of detail work, based on my willingness to fight for every one of them and leave nothing on the table. For them, I didn’t sleep, I did nothing but work. It meant a great deal to me to be able to help.”

That background was very much with her in Maui. “It feels like I’m starting Woolsey all over again,” she said.

—John Roemer