Trial & Litigation

Led strategic planning for the County’s defense across more than 500 individual cases, several class actions, and thousands of plaintiffs in state and federal court, including a third-party complaint naming cell carriers for failing to timely report tower failures. The path resolved in a $4.1 billion global settlement.

County of Los Angeles v. Southern California Gas Company (Porter Ranch). A temporary restraining order, and then a permanent injunction, kept 3,000 relocated families in safe alternative housing. The leak was the largest release of methane in United States history. Meyers Nave moved with the county public health department to size the County’s exposure and went to court.

Defended the County when Southern California Edison, whose lines started the fire, sued to shift its own wildfire liability onto the government entities that answered the emergency. Across 200 lawsuits, 3,000 plaintiffs, and 70 plaintiff firms, two dispositive rulings cut more than $1 billion from Edison’s claims against the County. The matter is resolved. The full defense story runs deeper.

So-called “social noise” – i.e., noise created by human voices – is not an environmental impact required by the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) to be analyzed for residential projects, the California Supreme Court ruled on June 6, 2024, in Make UC a Good Neighbor v. The Regents of the University of California.

We have represented the University of California in many critical housing projects. Meyers Nave has advised UC on the CEQA review of a new generation of Long Range Development Plans to guide future development to accommodate enrollment growth of tens of thousands of new students on campuses throughout the UC system, including UC Los Angeles, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside, UC San Diego and UC Irvine, including many housing projects.

Meyers Nave tried to a jury the value of a subsurface subway tunnel easement on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, across the street from the Golden Triangle, taken for the Westside Purple Line Subway Extension. The landowner’s appraiser valued the easement and claimed severance damages at $25,620,000. Metro’s appraiser put the total at $90,000. The jury returned a verdict of $235,000.

Meyers Nave represented Metro in acquiring subsurface tunnel easements beneath Beverly Hills High School and the Beverly Hills Unified School District administration building for Section 2 of the Westside Purple Line Subway Extension, which carries the line nine miles west from Wilshire/Western to the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Hospital.

The administration building case, over a 14,793 square foot easement on South Lasky Drive, was bifurcated. A December 2019 bench trial confirmed Metro’s right to take. At valuation the district’s appraiser put the taking at $4,930,507 with $8,889,493 in severance damages, against Metro’s $80,000 and no severance damages. The firm prevailed in both trials, and a jury returned a favorable verdict on the high school easement in July 2022.

Meyers Nave defeated every legal challenge to the $535 million Golden 1 Center, the downtown arena for the Sacramento Kings and the cornerstone of Sacramento’s revitalized, mixed-use “Entertainment District,” which turned six underused downtown blocks into a destination for professional sports, concerts, and live events. As outside counsel to the City of Sacramento and its private development partners, the firm led the City through a series of complex and high-profile eminent domain, environmental, and constitutional legal battles that threatened to derail the project’s aggressive timeline.

Meyers Nave defended UC Berkeley against a lawsuit seeking environmental review under CEQA regarding increases in student enrollment over projections in its LRDP and a related challenge to a new academic and housing project at the Goldman School of Public Policy. The firm’s work on these cases involved litigating a novel claim which led to the development of case law and legislation to address whether this issue is subject to review under CEQA.

(4) Pacific L.A. Marine Terminal, Tank Farms, and Pipelines Project. We advised POLA on compliance with CEQA and NEPA in connection with its preparation (with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) of a joint EIS/EIR for a crude oil terminal and related infrastructure.

Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA). Meyers Nave, including our Eminent Domain Group, has represented the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority on numerous eminent domain cases over the years for the BART Extension Project.

Meyers Nave serves as lead environmental compliance and land use permitting counsel for multiple large-scale cargo, shipping and transportation projects for container terminals and dockside intermodal railyards.

Meyers Nave guided UC on the development of UCLA’s 294,000-square-foot, $162 million Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference and Guest Center, one of the university’s most high-profile projects in recent years.

City of Los Angeles (Port of Los Angeles) China Shipping Terminal. Meyers Nave was brought in to help resolve long-standing issues presented by an adverse Court of Appeal decision setting aside an EIR.

Meyers Nave began the engagement by advising the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) on CEQA compliance for the BART extension into the City of San Jose.

Meyers Nave represented the City of Sacramento in defeating every legal challenge to the $535 million entertainment and sports arena in downtown Sacramento.

Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) – Eminent Domain Win for $12 Billion BART Extension.

The University’s demurrer was sustained and the court of appeal upheld it in a published decision. Meyers Nave represented UC Santa Cruz against a challenge to its ability to apply to the Local Agency Formation Commission for water service to serve expansion of its North Campus, in Community Water Coalition v. Santa Cruz Local Agency Formation Commission (2011) 200 Cal.App.4th 1317.

Meyers Nave represented Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF), North America’s largest freight railway, in seven lawsuits (later consolidated) challenging its $700 million Southern California International Gateway project, a near-dock rail transfer facility serving the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

For more than a decade, Meyers Nave has served as counsel in connection with development and implementation of the Los Angeles International Airport Master Plan, a $14 billion expansion of one of the world’s busiest airports, including defense against four consolidated lawsuits challenging the approval of the airport’s expansion plans under CEQA, NEPA and the California Coastal Act: Alliance for a Regional Solution v. City of Los Angeles et al.; City of El Segundo v. City of Los Angeles et al.; County of Los Angeles v. City of Los Angeles et al.; and Federation of Hillside and Canyon Associations v. City of Los Angeles et al.

On the $9.5 billion, nine-mile subway extension from Koreatown to the Westside, we acquired the properties the alignment could not move around, including the ground 100 feet beneath Beverly Hills High School. A December 2019 bench trial secured the subsurface rights, pretrial motions cut the school district’s $74 million claim to the $53.8 million it put to the jury, and in July 2022 the jury awarded $1.046 million.

Our client faced a barrage of claims from a former senior executive. The suit alleged age discrimination, constructive termination, unpaid commissions, and retaliation, with $2.8 million in damages at stake.

In one of the largest federal class action disability lawsuits in the country where plaintiffs sought to compel Los Angeles to undertake over $1.4 billion of curb cut construction and sidewalk repairs, the firm produced of millions of pages of hard copy documents and electronic data. The e-discovery efforts involved numerous databases and other electronically stored information across more than 10 City departments, each with its own network structure and document management protocols, including current and archived emails for more than 30 custodians, and issues involving legacy systems. The case also involved substantial motion practice, roughly two dozen depositions and two appeals before the Ninth Circuit. The matter resolved on favorable settlement terms.

Defended SCAG against a challenge to the Regional Housing Needs Allocation. The Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal, and the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari after requesting briefing, ending the effort to stall required housing.

Represented the City in a complex contractual dispute over the operation of a natural gas pipeline through the City, prevailing in full at the Court of Appeal in a published decision, with review denied (California Resources Production Corp. v. Antioch City Council (2024) 107 Cal.App.5th 481).

At the center of widespread media attention, residents near a Santa Clarita Valley landfill have filed over 25,000 odor complaints with the South Coast Air Quality Management District—a volume unprecedented in the District’s 50-year history—describing smells like “rotten eggs, sour milk, and cheap perfume” that cause headaches, nausea, nosebleeds, and “constant anxiety” about health impacts, forcing families indoors. Meyers Nave brought Los Angeles County’s nuisance abatement action over the underground smoldering event driving these complaints. In 2026, the District Court granted the preliminary injunction; the Ninth Circuit dismissed the ensuing challenge on May 27, 2026, and the matter has returned to the District Court to complete injunctive relief protecting the Castaic community.

Won a permanent injunction and a $6.6 million judgment in penalties and fees against an illegal dumping operation in the Santa Susana Mountains, a result that ran on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. Supervisor Kathryn Barger called it “an important victory for communities and the environment.”

Defended the City against Edison’s attempt to pass its Eaton Fire liability to the city that burned. The court sustained the City’s demurrer in its entirety, without leave to amend, dismissing Edison’s indemnity cross-complaint (as of July 2026; appellate review anticipated).

Managed discovery and Public Records Act practice reaching more than 70 million documents, building the databases and search protocols that narrowed the set to fewer than 1 million while minimizing client cost.

Obtained full acquittal after a six-week trial for a former CFO of a medical distribution company in connection with criminal securities fraud charges by the DOJ, arising out of $9 billion stock market capitalization loss following an earnings restatement. Also represented a former President of Countrywide Financial Corporation in connection with investigations by and litigation with the California Attorney General and the SEC, and related class actions.