What are some of your proudest recent achievements? Right before the COVID-19 shutdown, I led an S&C team in a bellwether trial that secured a favorable outcome for Volkswagen, which was battling claims brought by 10 consumers who had opted out of class settlements we had negotiated in 2016 regarding VW’s emissions issues. In the end, the jury rejected the claims of half the plaintiffs and awarded the remaining five a total of just $5,747 in compensatory damages.

In the punitive damages stage of the trial, the consumers were after hundreds of millions of dollars, and our team convinced the San Francisco jury to award them just $100,000, which was eventually lowered to $23,000.