Attorney Profiles - Class Counsel

KELLY M. DERMODY

Ms. Dermody is a partner in the San Francisco office of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, described as "one of the nation's premier plaintiffs firms" by The American Lawyer. Ms. Dermody chairs the firm's Employment Law practice group and has an active consumer protection practice. She has regularly been recognized for her outstanding legal work, including recently receiving a 2007 California Lawyer Attorney of the Year (CLAY) Award and being named a Northern California "Super Lawyer" in 2004, 2005, and 2006.

JAMES M. FINBERG

Mr. Finberg is a partner at the law firm Altshuler Berzon. From 1992 through 2006, he was a partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann and Bernstein and was the chair of the firm's Employment group. He is a graduate of Brown University (1980) and the University of Chicago Law School (1983), where he was Executive Editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. Mr. Finberg has served as lead counsel, or co-lead counsel, for the plaintiff classes in the following cases, among others: Butler v. Home Depot, C94-4335 SI (N.D.Cal.) ($87.5 million gender discrimination settlement, plus comprehensive injunctive relief, granted court approval in 1998); Frank v. United Airlines, No. C92 0692 MJJ (N.D. Cal.) ($36.5 million gender discrimination settlement, plus ERISA benefits, granted court approval in 2004); Carter, et al. v. United Parcel Service of America, Inc., C-97-01590-MJJ (N.D.Cal.) ($12.3 million race discrimination settlement, plus comprehensive injunctive relief, granted court approval in 1999); Trotter v. Perdue Farms, No. 99-893 RRM (D. Del.) ($10 million wage/hour settlement, plus ERISA benefits, granted court approval in 2002); Thomas v. CSAA, No. CH217752 (Alameda Cty. Sup. Ct.) ($8 million wage/hour settlement, granted court approval in 2002); and Church v. Consolidated Freightways, Inc., Civ. No. C-90-2290-DLJ (N.D. Cal.) ($13.5 million age discrimination settlement, granted court approval in 1993).

Mr. Finberg served as President of the Bar Association of San Francisco in 2005. He has also served as co-chair of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area and co-chair of the Northern District of California Delegation to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference. Mr. Finberg lectures widely, and has written numerous articles and book chapters regarding employment discrimination.

EVE H. CERVANTEZ

Eve H. Cervantez is a graduate of Washington University and Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. She served as a law clerk to Judge Charles A. Legge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. She was formerly a staff attorney at the Prison Law Office, working to assure humane conditions of confinement for state prison inmates, and a partner at Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, LLP. She is a chapter contributor to Employment Discrimination Law (BNA, 2002 Cumulative Supplement), Wage and Hour Laws, A State-by-State Survey (BNA, 2006 Supplement) and The Fair Labor Standards Act (BNA, 2006 Supplement), and is the author of "When Should You Bring State Law Wage and Hour Claims in Addition to, or Instead of, FLSA Claims," The Employee Advocate (Summer/Fall 2003). She also lectures regularly on wage and hour law and employment discrimination law.

TODD M. SCHNEIDER

Mr. Schneider founded the firm in 1993. He is a long-time civil rights advocate with an extensive background in employment litigation. With numerous court victories in cases involving race, gender, national origin and disability discrimination, he is a published author, lectures widely and serves on the Board of Directors of The San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association and the Board of Governors At Large of the Consumer Attorneys of California. Mr. Schneider is a member of the American Bar Association, The State Bar of California, The Association of Trial Lawyers of America, The National Employment Lawyers Association and The California Employment Lawyers Association.

Mr. Schneider has an extensive background in both employment and consumer rights litigation. Mr. Schneider has been an advocate for workers rights since founding the firm in 1993. He regularly speaks on employment litigation, class action litigation and other matters. He has worked on cases in trial courts throughout the country as well as the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the California Court of Appeal, The California Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court.

GUY B. WALLACE

Guy Wallace is a graduate of the Harvard Law School. He began his career in public interest law, and was the recipient of a Skadden Arps Fellowship. He has extensive experience in class action and impact litigation on behalf of persons with disabilities and other protected classes. He is a frequent lecturer on disability law issues, and he has authored various publications on the topic.

Mr. Wallace practices exclusively in the areas of civil rights and consumer rights. He is a recognized specialist in class action litigation. His expertise includes both disability access and employment class action cases. Mr. Wallace lectures and writes extensively about the practice of impact litigation. He has been a wheelchair user since the age of 16 as the result of a spinal injury.

JOHN L. BURRIS

John Burris is a prominent civil rights attorney and a nationally featured legal analyst. He was named one of the top 100 most influential Attorneys in the State of California by the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal in 2005. In June 2005 he was featured as "Oakland's Johnnie Cochran" by the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Magazine. In 1995, the readers of the Oakland Tribune voted him the "Best Attorney from the Valley to the Bay." He has an AV rating with Martindale Hubbell.

Mr. Burris is known for handling high profile and controversial civil rights, race discr imin ation , and police brutality cases. Among his most notable clients are Rodney King, Tupac Shakur, Gary Payton, Keyshawn Johnson, actor Delroy Lindo, San Francisco Police Chief Earl Sanders, and many public officials and employees.

Many of Mr. Burris's cases have resulted in significant reforms, including a landmark police misconduct case in 2003 where he represented 119 plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against the Oakland Police Department known as the "Riders" which resulted in a multi-million dollar settlement and a Consent Degree placing the Department under a Federal Court Monitor. In 1999, he wrote a book, BLUE vs. BLACK: Let's End the Conflict Between Police and Minorities. The book offered a blueprint for fostering better relations between the police and minorities communities. He used many of the ideas as background in developing the reforms in the Oakland Riders litigation.

In two separate cases, Mr. Burris represented young African American men who because of their race were denied employment as Santa Claus. In two other cases he was involved in retail discrimination litigation where practices for returning purchased items or check cashing policies were different for African Americans or residents of Oakland than they were for others. Several employment case involving gender based discrimination have improved working conditions for women. He has handled many wrongful death cases and numerous other cases that have affected policies concerning the police use of canines, deadly force, treatment of the mentally impaired, hog tying, pepper spray, crowd control, and tasers.

Mr. Burris is and has been a frequent legal analyst for both national and local media, including on Fox, MSNBC, Court TV, CNN, and many local electronic and press media. He figured most prominently as an analyst during the OJ Simpson trial.

Mr. Burris is an active member of Dwight D. Eisenhower's People to People Ambassador Program. As a delegate he has met with criminal defense lawyers and judges in Athens, Greece, Florence and Rome, Italy and Barcelona, Spain. Also as a delegate he has met with employment lawyers in the People's Republic of China and the Republic of South Africa.

Mr. Burris also makes personal appearances nationwide discussing issues of police misconduct, the criminal justice system, trial practice and other legal matters of high public interest. Amongst others he has been a keynote speaker or panelist at hundreds of events such as Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano's Racial Profiling Law Enforcement/Community Conference, The National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives regional training conference, U.S. Department of Justice FBI section's conference on FBI corruption/Civil Rights at Quantico, Virginia; U.S. Department of Justice, Community Relations Service section's national staff meeting and the National Association of Black Police Officers Conference. Likewise, Mr. Burris has spoken or lectured to various sections of the American Bar Association, National Bar Association, American Trial Lawyers Association, National Lawyers Guild, California State Bar and many local bar associations.

Mr. Burris has been featured and acknowledged for his accomplishments in various magazines, newspapers, by community groups, bar associations and public entities such as state assembly, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, County of Alameda and City of Oakland.

Mr. Burris obtained a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Accounting from Golden Gate University, a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from U. C. Berkeley Graduate School of Business, and a law degree from U.C.Berkeley School of Law, Boalt Hall in 1973. He was an associate with Jenner and Block (Chicago firm) and a prosecutor with both the Cook County State's Attorney (Chicago) and Alameda County District Attorney's offices respectively. He is married to North Carolina Central Family Law Professor, Cheryl Burris.

KAY McKENZIE PARKER

Ms. McKenzie Parker founded McKenzie Parker Law Firm in 1989 as soon as she graduated from law school and became an attorney in California. She has specialized in employment discrimination litigation since that time, representing employees in federal and state court in race, national origin, sex, age, disability discrimination and wrongful termination cases. She has represented plaintiffs in multi-party cases in California and Ohio and has taught as an adjunct professor of legal studies in several California state colleges. Simultaneous with her employment law practice, Ms. McKenzie Parker worked as an appellate attorney from 1991 to 1995 for the Sixth District Court of Appeal in San Jose and a civil rights attorney representing victims of police misconduct in Santa Clara County and representing prisoners in Tulare and Fresno Counties. Ms. McKenzie Parker is currently the President of the Hugh Goodwin Bar Association, the specialty bar association for African-American lawyers and judges in Fresno County. She is on the Federal Jury Outreach Committee for the Ninth Circuit Court, an organization that originated in the Eastern District Court of California in Fresno. The Federal Jury Outreach Committee is actively involved in seeking racial diversity in federal juries in the district courts within the Ninth Circuit. In addition to the Hugh Goodwin Bar Association, Ms. McKenzie Parker is also currently a member of the Fresno County Bar Association, the Central California Trial Lawyers Association, the California Employment Lawyers Association, the California Association of Black Lawyers, the California Bar Association and the National Bar Association.

Prior to becoming an attorney, Ms. McKenzie Parker completed her undergraduate studies in mathematics and was one of the first African-American female software engineers in the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley in 1974, working for IBM, AMD and Intel. At the end of her 12-year technical career, she was a software engineering manager at Molecular Computers in Sunnyvale, California.

MICHAEL (CAEL) DAVIS

Cael S. Davis is an accomplished trial attorney, founding the Law Offices of Michael S. Davis in 2001 to focus, among other matters, on civil rights and employment litigation. Mr. Davis has over 12 years experience representing both plaintiffs and defendants in complex civil and class action litigation. He began his career at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges in Los Angeles, the worlds largest litigation-focused firm, where he apprenticed with the firms named partners in representing some of the nations largest companies in a broad range of matters from employment litigation to class actions. Subsequently, Mr. Davis practiced with Morgenstein & Jubelirer, litigation firm in San Francisco, and served as General Counsel for several companies. Mr. Davis has extensive trial experience and several court victories in high profile and multi-million dollar cases.

Mr. Davis graduated from Stanford Law School in 1992, where he was a Section Editor for the Stanford Law and Policy Journal, and an active member of Black Law Students Association. He is a member of the American Bar Association, and the California Bar Association. More recently, he has conducted Trial Advocacy workshops at the Stanford Law School.

WAUKEEN Q. McCOY

Commissioner McCoy is a graduate of San Francisco State University, he worked as a paralegal clerk for San Francisco law firm Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro for several years and as a Procedural Motions Deputy Clerk for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, working closely with Justice Joseph T. Sneed and Chief Justice James Browning. Mr. McCoy graduated from Hastings College of Law in 1992. McCoy was elected Vice-President of the student body at Hastings, represented the economically disadvantaged as a certified intern for the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County, and taught Street Law to high school students. In 1993, Mr. McCoy started his own legal firm in San Francisco, specializing in civil rights work and litigation related to employment discrimination and discrimination based on age, race, sex, sexual orientation, HIV, gender, transgender, and disability. He was involved in Robinson v. Louie, which set the precedent on the issue of non-disclosure of HIV to a partner. In 2000, he was lead counsel in Carroll v. IBC, winning the largest jury verdict ever in a racial discrimination case. In September 2000, he was honored when Mayor Brown proclaimed September 1, 2000 as Waukeen McCoy Day in the City. McCoy has been nominated by the California Association of Black Lawyers as Lawyer of the Year in 2003. McCoy is currently a Board Member of the California Association of Black Lawyers. McCoy was appointed by the Honorable Willie Brown, Jr. as San Francisco's Ethics Commissioner in February of 2002.

BARRY GOLDSTEIN

Barry Goldstein is of counsel to the law firm of Goldstein, Demchak, Baller, Borgen & Dardarian. He has worked on a number of discrimination class action cases that resulted in signi ficant judgments or settlements including Kraszewski v. State Farm ($240 million); Haynes v. Shoney's, Inc. ($132.5 million) (The University of Georgia Press published a book describing the Haynes v. Shoney's, Inc. litigation, S. Watkins, The Black O (1997); Butler, et al. v. Home Depot, Inc. ($87.5 million); Shores v. Publix Super Markets, Inc. ($81.5 million); Rice v. Southern California Edison ($18.25 million); Babbitt v. Albertsons ($29 million); Weddington v. Ingles Markets, Inc., ($16.65 million). Mr. Goldstein also argued City of Burlington v. Dague in the United States Supreme Court.

Mr. Goldstein was previously employed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., (LDF) for eighteen years, including several years as the Director of its Washington, D.C. office. At LDF, Mr. Goldstein litigated employment discrimination or related cases including Albemarle Paper v. Moody, Lorance v. AT&T Technologies (argued in Supreme Court), IUE v. Robbins & Myers (argued in Supreme Court), Detroit Police Officers Assn. v. Young, James v. Stockham Valves & Fitting, Inc., among many others. Mr. Goldstein joined Goldstein Demchak in 1989. He became a Named Partner in 1991 and Managing Partner in 1995. Since January 2000 Mr. Goldstein has been Of Counsel with the firm.

Mr. Goldstein has been a Lecturer of Law at Harvard Law School. He is a former Co-Chairman of two committees of the American Bar Association: the Equal Employment Opportunity Committee of the Labor Section and the Employment and Labor Relations Law Committee of the Litigation Section. He has also has given many presentations on Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action and Litigation subjects.

Mr. Goldstein holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government from Harvard College, a diploma in Criminology from the University of Cambridge, and a J.D. degree from Columbia University. He was an editor of the Columbia Law Review and a James Kent Scholar, and he currently serves on the Board of Visitors of Columbia University School of Law. He is a member of the Board of Trustee of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and is Co-Editor of Lindenmann & Grossman, Employment Discrimination Law (Third Edition).