Ryan D. Saba

El Segundo • Business Litigation, Employment & Personal Injury

In August 2023, Ryan D. Saba and his team secured a $62 million verdict in a case involving a former employee accused of starting a competing business using confidential information from the plaintiff, a medical biologics company. Skye Orthobiologics v. CTM Biomedical, 20-cv-3444 (C.D. Cal., filed April 14, 2020).

In another matter, Saba won a $25.6 million jury verdict on behalf of a disabled client. Tusant v. City of Hemet, MCC1701026 (Riv. Super. Ct., filed Sept. 12, 2017).

In February 2020, Saba successfully proved that a crosswalk designed and maintained by the city of Hemet was dangerous and should not have been established, leading to a transformative impact on neighborhood safety designs.

"In [Tusant v. City of Hemet], the significant challenge was proving the crosswalk was in a dangerous location. In order to do so, [my team and I] walked the neighborhood and knocked on doors to ask residents about their experience with the crosswalk," Saba said. "In doing so, [my team and I] found a key witness who had complained to the city on numerous occasions about accidents and near misses at that crosswalk."

In addition to these cases, Saba was also part of the legal team that secured a $100 million settlement in a case against Riot Games. Each of these cases presented unique challenges and complexities. For instance, the business litigation matter initially projected a 15-day trial with more than 1300 exhibits and scores of witnesses but was later limited to 12 hours per side. This presented an opportunity for Saba to streamline the key arguments and deliver a concise, compelling narrative to the jury. In the personal injury case, Saba and his team undertook exhaustive neighborhood walks and door-to-door inquiries to find a key witness who had previously raised concerns about the dangerous crosswalk, thereby strengthening their argument.

Saba's experiences led him to share insight into how juries are becoming smarter and more sophisticated and that their attention spans are getting shorter. To be a successful trial lawyer, he said, an attorney needs to present evidence in a clear, straightforward manner. In Saba's own words: "Be direct with the jury."

"Juries punish people or companies that breach a basic core value in life: lying, cheating, stealing, dishonesty, abuse of power, malicious conduct, etc.," he said. "Trials are about human stories. The plaintiff has a story and so does the defendant. As the attorney, your credibility is as equally important as the credibility of your client. Presenting the story with credible evidence and over-exaggerating the evidence you have is important to establishing that credibility. So, to me, the trend should be more streamlined trials. It is better for the judicial system and the clients."