Credit Jessica M. Weisel, a senior L.A. partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer Feld LLP, with a major assist on the silver medal won by the U.S. ice dancing team of Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto at the recent Turin Olympics.
Weisel, cousin of the 24-year-old Agosto, joined the effort to win U.S. citizenship for the Canadian- born Belbin nine months before the games. The legal victory capped on New Year’s Eve at the field office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Detroit took more than five years for Belbin, 21.
She moved to the Detroit area in 1998 to train with Agosto, but didn’t get her green card until 2002. A typical five-year wait for naturalization would have shut her out of the Games, since only U.S. citizens can be on the Olympic team. Congress took up her plight, however, and passed legislation that allowed her to take advantage of recent changes that shortened the naturalization process. She got the OK just in time to get her passport picture and a plane ticket to Italy.
Weisel said that when she went before her firm’s board to have her pro-bono work for Belbin approved, the support was inspiring.
“We wanted to make sure they got the opportunity to fulfill their dream,” said Weisel, who just returned from Turin where she saw Belbin and Agosto claim the first ice dancing medals by Americans in 30 years. “They missed the 2002 Olympics because of citizenship issues and this would have been the second time.”
Weisel and her Akin colleague, Washington, D.C.-based Barney J. Skladany Jr., were out front in the lobbying efforts to win passage for the bill that provided Belbin with a 33-hour window in which to have her citizenship approved. U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., sponsored the bill.
“It was a huge accomplishment to see them on the Olympic ice,” Weisel said, “but to see them excel so incredibly it was beyond our wildest dreams.”
Top-Level Matchup
Greene Broillet & Wheeler LLP is recognized as one the nation’s top plaintiff’s firms. It has won the highest product liability jury verdict, $4.9 billion from General Motors in 1999, and claims a 98 percent success rate.
An ongoing personal injury case against the City of Santa Monica is putting that reputation to the test, however. The well-heeled seaside municipality is know for being difficult to best in liability suits, having prevailed in several recent high-profile cases.
Greene Broillet’s client, 79-year-old Haroun Mehdipour, claims that he was trying to board one of the city’s Big Blue Bus vehicles when the bus picked up speed and ran over him. Mehdipour suffered brain injuries and his arm was amputated. The complaint alleges negligence, negligent hiring and negligent supervision. Beverly Hills’ Azizzadeh & Ross is co-counsel. A verdict could be reached as early as next week.
Window Stressing
Stuart Eppsteiner of Eppsteiner & Smith LLP and Paul Stevens of Milstein Adelman & Kreger LLP sent notice of a class action against Monterey Park-based International Aluminum Corp. and two of its subsidiaries last week.
The proposed suit alleges that the company’s fixed aluminum windows leak into interior walls and have caused damage in 80,000 California homes, with a total of 1.1 million windows installed. The attorneys claim International Aluminum’s liability for the windows, which they have manufactured since 1993, totals between $300 million and $1.1 billion. International Aluminum issued a statement dismissing the claims last week.
The class action, certified November 15 in Solano County, began with 12 plaintiffs and is expected to increase exponentially after the notice phase. The lawyers will advertise in newspapers in 48 California counties beginning March 1. Additionally, they are mailing notices to 11,000 homeowners, property owners and commercial dealers. The final phase will be a mailing to as many as 20,000 homeowners they discover within the next week.
“We’ve already had a strong response from the mailings,” said Eppsteiner, who claims that more than 80,000 homes may have been damaged by leaking windows. A trial date is expected to be set on April 19.
Booming Biz
Business is booming in the corporate department of Alschuler Grossman Stein & Kahan LLP. Over the past year, the 90-attorney law firm has hired eight lawyers and promoted another one into that department. The corporate department had just 15 attorneys at the beginning of 2005 and now boasts 22 and the firm is looking for two more associates.
Corporate department head and founding partner Robert L. Kahan says the expansion is due in part to an increase in venture capital and private equity business. But most of the growth, he said, is the result of the infusion of talent his firm has seen recently.
Thomas M. Cleary, Louis R. Dienes, William Mark Levinson, Lee M. Weinberg and Rachel Simonoff Wexler were brought in as partners, around the time that Jonathan S. Gluck was promoted to partner.
“I’m really looking for the next generation to take over. They’re entrepreneurial, smart, good with clients and service-oriented,” Kahan said. “I’m very excited, to tell you the truth. They’re phenomenal people.”
Kahan has been trying to grow the practice at Alschuler Grossman since his Stein & Kahan LLP merged with Alschuler in 1999. Andrea Morgan, Joseph I. O’Hara and Rebekah K. Prince were hired as associates in 2005.
Elsewhere, Richards Watson & Gershon, a firm specializing in work for municipalities, named three Los Angeles attorneys shareholders. Teresa Ho-Urano (public finance department), Owen P. Gross (real estate) and Bruce W. Galloway (real estate) all moved up.
*Staff reporter Emily Bryson York can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 235, or at
[email protected]
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