HarrisMartin's Southern California Wildfires and Mudslide Litigation Conference Speaker Profiles



Co-Chair Lexi J. Hazam, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, San Francisco Show/Hide Bio

Co-Chair Lexi J. Hazam

An emerging leader within the plaintiffs’ bar, Lexi J. Hazam represents clients in mass tort cases and qui tam actions, as well as complex class actions.

Lexi represents hip replacement patients in the DePuy ASR, DePuy Pinnacle metal-on-metal, and Stryker Rejuvenate hip implant injury lawsuits, representing over 300 clients and working with leading regulatory experts. Lexi has been appointed by the court overseeing the nationwide Abilify gambling injuries MDL litigation to the Plaintiffs Executive Committee and the Science and Expert Sub-Committee for the case, and was also appointed by the court overseeing the nationwide Benicar MDL litigation to the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee therein, and serves as Co-Chair of the Benicar MDL Plaintiffs’ Science and Experts Committee. She has also spoken at several conferences on Benicar injuries and Benicar lawsuits.

Lexi has spoken at two conferences for plaintiffs’ counsel on the DePuy litigation. She has also spoken on mass torts topics at the Women En Mass conference for women in mass torts, the annual CAOC conference, and the California Lawyer’s Product Liability Roundtable.

Lexi’s qui tam cases include the $21.7 million settlement of litigation against Avaya, Lucent Technologies, and AT&T for charging governmental agencies for the lease of communications systems they no longer possessed and/or were no longer maintained by defendants. She worked on the Office Depot qui tam litigation, a lawsuit alleging that Office Depot knowingly overcharged California cities, counties, and school districts on office and school supplies purchased under U.S. Communities contracts, that settled in 2015 for $68.5 million. Lexi has also worked on several additional qui tam cases alleging Medicare fraud. Lexi has been a speaker on the California Lawyer’s False Claims Act Roundtable.

Co-Chair Robert J. Nelson, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, San Francisco Show/Hide Bio

Co-Chair Robert J. Nelson

Robert J. Nelson has played a leading role in the firm’s False Claims Act (fraud against the government law), automotive, aviation, defective products, mass torts, tobacco, and consumer fraud cases, taking on many of the world’s largest corporations and holding them accountable. He has served as court-appointed Lead or Co-Lead Counsel in numerous state and federal coordinated proceedings, as well as in more than 30 class actions.

Robert chairs Lieff Cabraser’s False Claims Act practice group and has spearheaded whistleblower suits that have resulted in settlements totaling over $260 million and changed industry practices.

Robert and co-counsel represented California consumers in a class action lawsuit against BP Solar International and Home Depot U.S.A. charging the companies sold solar panels with defective junction boxes that were substantially certain to fail within their warranted lives due to an inherent defect in the junction box, with attendant fire risks. In 2017, final approval was granted to a $67 million settlement of the action that not only provided settlement class members with high failure rate models with complete replacements and others with failed panel replacements, but also helps eliminate any fire danger from the panels.

Robert represented the relator and the City of Los Angeles along with the County of Santa Clara, Stockton Unified School District, and 16 additional California cities, counties, and school districts in a false discount pricing qui tam lawsuit against Office Depot that accused the office supply giant of repeatedly breaking its promises under a nationwide supply contract to give its California governmental customers the lowest price it was offering other governmental customers, along with other pricing misconduct. The suit led to a 2015 settlement of $77.5 million under the California False Claims Act.

Co-Chair Rahul Ravipudi, Panish Shea & Boyle LLP, Los Angeles Show/Hide Bio

Co-Chair Rahul Ravipudi

Rahul Ravipudi is a partner at Panish Shea & Boyle LLP and has spent his legal career handling catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases involving commercial vehicles, pedestrians, industrial or construction accidents, as well as dangerous conditions of public and private property. He also represents consumers in class actions against businesses who engage in unfair and illegal business practices.

Mr. Ravipudi has obtained numerous landmark verdicts and settlements including a $160.5 million jury verdict for a man who suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result of a vicious beating by security personnel for a nightclub, as well as a $23,500,000 settlement on behalf of the family of Paul Lee, a 19-year-old non-verbal autistic student who tragically died aboard a Whittier school bus after the driver left him behind to engage in a sexual tryst with a coworker. The Lee case was a catalyst for significant change in school transportation with Governor Jerry Brown signing the “Paul Lee School Bus Safety Law” in September 2016, requiring all school buses in the state of California to be equipped with a child safety alarm system that must be deactivated by the bus driver before departing the bus. The new law will go into effect at the start of the 2018-19 school year and requires bus drivers to receive training in child-safety check procedures.

Committed to serving as an advocate for his clients, Mr. Ravipudi has obtained numerous eight-figure awards including a $20,500,000 jury verdict for the mother of a high school student who was killed while walking to a bus stop, a $19,786,818 jury verdict for a man who suffered severe burn and traumatic brain injuries when his rental home exploded as a result of Southern California Gas Company negligence, a $13,935,550 jury verdict for 19-year-old pedestrian who suffered extensive injuries as a result of being struck on the sidewalk by a vehicle driven by a Los Angeles County employee, and $10 million for the family of an independent truck driver killed by an intoxicated heavy lift operator at a stevedoring terminal in Long Beach. Mr. Ravipudi shared his insight into successfully litigating cases against the stevedoring companies in an article entitled, “Danger on the Docks – Where there is an injury or death on the waterfront, drugs or alcohol are too often involved” published in the February 2011 edition of Advocate, journal of the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles.

Co-Chair Mark P. Robinson Jr., Robinson Calcagnie, Inc., Newport Beach, CA Show/Hide Bio

Co-Chair Mark P. Robinson Jr.

Mark P. Robinson, Jr. is the founder, senior partner and sole shareholder of Robinson Calcagnie, Inc., based in Newport Beach, California. Mr. Robinson earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University and graduated cum laude from Loyola School of Law. He has established a prominent legal practice devoted to consumer safety and has worked on thousands of products liability cases, including the landmark Ford Pinto case, Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Company, where a jury in Orange County, California, awarded $128 million in compensatory and punitive damages. The verdict was recognized by the Association of Trial Lawyers of America as one of the ten most significant civil trials of the past millennium.

Mr. Robinson’s other significant trials include: Anderson v. General Motors, where a Los Angeles jury awarded $4.9 billion to burn victims in an automobile crash; Barnett v. Merck, a $51 million verdict in New Orleans federal court against the manufacturer of the prescription drug Vioxx; Ketchum vs. Hyundai, where a Los Angeles County jury awarded $15 million to a young boy paralyzed by a defective seat belt during a collision; Oliver vs. Nissan, where a jury returned a $9 million verdict in a product liability action in Los Angeles County; Siu v. General Motors, a $9 million judgment in a product liability action in San Diego; and Fair v. Ford, a $12 million award in a wrongful death action in Kentucky arising from a post-collision fire involving a school bus.

A. Barry Cappello, Cappello & Noël, LLP, Santa Barbara, CA

Alison E. Cordova, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP, Burlingame, CA

Noah J. Finnegan, Associate Professor, Physical & Biological Sciences, Earth & Planetary Sciences Department, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA

Robert A. Curtis, Foley Bezek Behle & Curtis, LLP, Santa Barbara, CA

Dave Fox, Fox Law APC, Solana Beach, CA

Michael A. Kelly, Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger, San Francisco

Sarah R. London, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, San Francisco

Matthew S. McNicholas, McNicholas & McNicholas, LLP, Los Angeles

Frank M. Pitre, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP, Burlingame, CA

Lyssa Amy Roberts, Panish Shea & Boyle, Los Angeles

Alexander Robertson IV, Robertson & Associates, LLP, Westlake Village, CA

Gerald Singleton, Singleton Law Firm, Solana Beach, CA

Gregory P. Waters, Engstrom, Lipscomb & Lack, Los Angeles