Education

University of California, Berkeley (Boalt Hall), J.D.
December 1984

University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D.
June 1994 (sociology)

University of Frankfurt, Department of Philosophy, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellow
October 1986 - June 1988

Reed College, B.A.
May 1979 (philosophy-history)

 

Experience

I have spent most of my legal career as a solo practitioner focusing on the representation of individuals in appellate courts.  However, from 2002 to 2005 I was a partner at Sheridan & Baker, P.S., a small Seattle firm which represented plaintiffs principally in whistleblower and employment discrimination cases.  My focus at the firm was appellate litigation and dispositive trial level motions.

There I litigated Pham v. City of Seattle, 124 Wn.App. 716 (2004), in which the Washington Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s denial of an attorney fee multiplier, ordered the base attorney fee award be increased approximately $40,000, and established that plaintiffs prevailing under the Washington Law Against Discrimination are entitled to an income tax offset for non-economic damages among other holdings and Pham v. City of Seattle, 120 Wn.App. 1038 (2004) (unpublished) in which the Washington Court of Appeals affirmed judgments awarding a total in excess of $500,000 to two victims of employment discrimination among other holdings.

I also prevailed against defendant’s motion to dismiss in Fadaie v. Alaska Airlines, Inc., 293 F.Supp.2d 1210 (W.D. Wash. 2003) in which the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington held that federal protection for whistleblowers in aviation did not pre-empt a whistleblower’s state law claim for wrongful discharge among other holdings; and prevailed against the defendants’ summary judgment motion based on the plaintiff’s signed waiver in Goh v. American President Lines, Limited, King County Superior Court No. 02-2-29670-0 SEA, after which the employment discrimination suit concluded in a confidential settlement.

Prior to 2002, my solo practice focused on felony appeals and petitions for writ of habeas corpus on behalf of defendants on appointment by the California Court of Appeal, and on a few occasions, by the California Supreme Court. My cases included People v. Collins, 26 Cal.4th 297 (2001) in which the California Supreme Court held that in bargaining with the defendant to secure a waiver of his right to a jury trial, the trial court violated its obligation to remain neutral, which amounted to a “structural error” necessitating reversal of the defendant’s 8 felony convictions. Several of those cases, including People v Malik, H018477 (Cal. Ct. App. 2000) and In re Anthony Mizner, H023553 (Cal. Ct. App. 2002) yielded the reversal of “3-Strikes” sentences or convictions that had resulted in “3-Strikes” sentences.

During the early 1990’s, in addition to litigating felony appeals and petitions for writ of habeas corpus, I worked as co-counsel in several civil rights lawsuits on behalf of political protestors, including Bringardner v. Cairns, San Francisco Superior Court No. 920290 in which a dozen AIDS activists and observers of an AIDS protest obtained a settlement of several hundred thousand dollars for unlawful arrest and use of force from nearly a dozen San Francisco police officers, including the Chief of Police.