Practice Areas

Appellate

Win or lose in the trial court, success on appeal requires a fresh and focused reexamination of a case with an eye toward the unique aspects and subtleties of appellate proceedings.  Howard Rice’s broad and deep experience in the appellate courts equips the firm to handle that task and to devise superior strategies for winning.  Our appellate lawyers know what works and what doesn’t in the appellate courts.

Few firms can match the depth of Howard Rice’s appellate practice.  Among the members of our appellate practice are three former United States Supreme Court clerks; nine former clerks from the United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit; three appellate specialists certified by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization; two members of the California Academy of Appellate Lawyers (including a past-President); and one member of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, an invitation-only group limited to 500 appellate lawyers nationwide.

Our clients can depend on a level-headed and objective assessment of the likelihood of success on appeal, enabling them to decide whether to devote the resources necessary to litigate on appeal.  We go beyond typical exercises in legal research for our clients and offer a more meaningful evaluation of how a client’s position is likely to fare on appeal.  Likewise, Howard Rice’s appellate lawyers can act as consultants at the trial court level to improve the chances of overturning a possibly adverse result or, conversely, to protect a favorable outcome from reversal on appeal.

Given the depth and breadth of our experience, Howard Rice is regularly retained in appeals of all types, not just blockbusters that hit the papers.  No matter the stakes, clients count on our appellate lawyers for their experience, creativity and mastery of what it takes to win on appeal.

Recent Representative Engagements

Represented Genentech, Inc. in the California Supreme Court in an appeal of a $500+ million judgment, which included $200 million of punitive damages.  The punitive damages award was the largest ever upheld in a published appellate decision in California, until the California Supreme Court overturned that award unanimously in 2008.  The case involved the cutting-edge question of whether Genentech could be held to have owed and breached a fiduciary duty to a researcher when Genentech failed to pay royalties due to the researcher.

Represented Benetta Buell-Wilson, a California woman who was left paraplegic after a rollover accident in her Ford Explorer, in five years of appeals in her case against the Ford Motor Company. A jury originally awarded her $280 million against Ford, which was later reduced by a trial court to $150 million and by the Court of Appeal to $82 million. Ford tried, through the California Court of Appeal, the California Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, to avoid paying damages for the injuries she sustained in her 2002 car accident. In late 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court put an end to Ford Motor Co.’s effort to set aside a $55-million punitive damages award against it in Buell-Wilson v. Ford Motor Co. With interest on the judgment, the amount Ford will be required to pay Benetta Buell-Wilson is now nearly $88 million.

Represented Datamize LLC in filing a writ petition to the United States Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit seeking to overturn the disqualification of Datamize LLC’s trial counsel. While writ petitions are notoriously difficult to prevail on, the Federal Circuit issued a briefing order that suggested that the Court was considering issuing the writ. The case settled shortly thereafter. 

Represented a major law firm in a California Supreme Court case in which the court unanimously disapproved a longstanding Court of Appeal interpretation of the Mandatory Fee Arbitration Act, Bus. & Prof. Code §§6200 et seq.  Schatz v. Allen Matkins Leck Gamble & Mallory LLP, 45 Cal. 4th 557 (2009). 

Representative Clients

  • Datamize LLC
  • Genentech, Inc.
  • The Oakland Raiders
  • Pacific Gas & Electric Company
  • Regents of the University of California
  • Stanford University
  • The Irvine Company
  • University of California
  • Wells Fargo & Company

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