Our most recent appellate victory was in 2024 in a long-running dispute over a substantial property development. In this case, we persuaded a California Court of Appeal to reverse a judgment rendered by a California Superior Court.
In this case, our client asserted derivative and direct claims against two individual defendants, one of whom litigated cross-claims against our client. The jury found for our client on all claims and cross-claims and awarded compensatory damages and punitive damages. After the jury trial, the Superior Court set aside several of the jury’s verdicts and on this basis absolved one defendant of all liability and rejected the jury’s awards of punitive damages.
We appealed from these rulings, as did one of the defendants. After reviewing the briefs, the Court of Appeal invited the parties to submit supplemental briefs on key issues of fact and law that principally concerned the fiduciary duties that a member-manager of an LLC owes to its other members.
Our efforts in this appeal proved successful. By its decision, the Court of Appeal reinstated all of the vacated jury verdicts and reversed the judgment accordingly. The Court of Appeal also dismissed the defendant’s cross-appeal, awarded costs of appeal to our client, and remanded the case to the Superior Court for a trial on the amount of punitive damages that each defendant must pay. It was a virtually unqualified victory for our client, for whom we also recovered a favorable allocation of the derivative damages and a large fee award during post-trial proceedings.
Here is the Court of Appeal’s Opinion in our client’s favor, as well as our appellate submissions—Appellant’s Opening Brief, Appellant’s Reply Brief, and Appellant’s Supplemental Letter Brief. The case was originally tried by the late Daral Mazzarella, who passed away shortly after the trial.
Case Name: Wardak v. WLOW Partners, LLC et al. (Cal. App. 2024, Case No. G061606).