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At Smith & Myers, The Focus Is You

We constantly think about how to get the best possible results for our clients. To successfully meet that challenge, we start by listening to you. It takes time, commitment, and hard work to learn about the legal issues facing you or your organization. We invest the time because cookie-cutter solutions do not focus on your legal issues, objectives, and expectations. Because our analysis starts with understanding you or your company, we tailor strategies and advice to your particular needs. Because we have taken the time to build a relationship, we can look proactively for creative solutions that fit your situation. Because we know you or your company, we recognize the business impact, not just the legal effect, of our recommendations. But it all starts with our focus on you.

Trust, Probate & Estates

Perhaps more so in estate planning than in any other area of law, we build lifelong relationships. It’s more than the creation of the document called your trust or your will – it’s about knowing that as your family and estate grows, your estate planning keeps pace.

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The focus at Smith & Myers is on you. While at many estate planning law firms the relationship ends when you sign your estate planning documents, we see the signing of your documents as the beginning of our relationship with your family.

Over time, your assets will grow and change multiple times; kids mature from the small ones we all want to protect in the event of a parent’s premature death or disability to the mature adults capable of acting as trustee or agent of your estate in your old age; the law changes regularly on estate tax exemption amounts, rates, and health care requirements. Your estate plan must keep up with all of these changes in order to make sure your plan works when your family needs it the most. We keep the focus on you with annual reminders reviewing what we have created and updating to your changed circumstances. The costs of failing to update are typically far greater than keeping your plan current.

With each of our estate plans, we include a no-charge annual review to ensure that as our clients’ lives change, so does their estate plan. We organize your estate with a simple asset inventory that allows us to consider each of your assets and ensure they are titled in a manner allowing for maximum protection and ease of transfer to beneficiaries with minimum estate tax. We keep all our clients updated about changes in the law and issues that might affect their lives.

We will create your estate planning documents including:

  • Living Trusts
  • Wills
  • Powers of Attorney
  • Advance Health Care Directives
  • Child Custodian Protection

Smith & Myers handles the trust and estate legal work for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles-Roman Catholic Archbishop, Catholic Charities of Los Angeles, Inc., and many individuals and privately held companies just like you.

Employment Law

Smith & Myers represents businesses and individuals in all aspects of employment matters. We counsel clients regarding their policies on sexual harassment in the workplace, wage and hour rules, leaves of absence and workplace accommodations, discipline and termination issues, and avoiding workplace litigation.

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We also assist with the design and implementation of personnel practices and the drafting and negotiation of employment agreements. We also regularly litigate wrongful termination, harassment, defamation, and discrimination claims in state and federal court, as well as in alternative dispute forums such as mediation and arbitration. We have a proven ability to resolve lawsuits before trial through aggressive motion practice and to present our clients’ positions persuasively to judges and juries. Our experience in all aspects of employment litigation enables us to advise our clients whether to settle or try their case.

Business Transactions

We provide business transactional services in multiple areas including:

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  • Corporate, LLC and partnership formation and maintenance
  • Buy-Sell, Shareholder and Operating Agreements
  • Employment and Independent Contractor Agreements
  • Licensing, Assignment, and other Vendor Contracts
  • Purchase and Sale and related Stock or Assets Transfer Agreements
  • Trusts, estates, and business succession planning to transfer a family business to the next generation.

We act as outside general counsel to businesses, providing legal advice in the same way a general counsel would in a larger company’s legal department. We counsel individuals and entities, typically privately owned or family-run businesses with operating gross revenues of $500,000 to $50,000,000 per year. We act as a legal-information resource for businesses, addressing our clients’ legal issues and providing oversight and referral for our clients’ legal needs if outside our expertise. We offer practical advice to business owners on getting through a wide variety of day-to-day situations, so they can focus on being productive with their business and count on us for the legal advice that impacts so many of their business decisions.

Experience

A representative sample of Smith & Myers business transactional and litigation experience includes the following:

  • Representing a major California University in multi-million dollar trust litigation. The Trustee contended the version of the trust granting a one-third interest to the University was fraudulent and should be voided. We aggressively challenged the fraud claim, and ultimately settled for the entire amount of the gift, plus an additional amount to offset costs and fees;
  • Representing the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles in all its trust and estate transactions and litigation;
  • Multiple Purchase and Sale transactions for a family-owned, precious metals manufacturer;
  • Trademark and licensing for multiple closely-held clothing manufacturers and software manufacturers;
  • Successful summary judgment defense in a multi-million dollar film financing litigation involving major studios and London-backed film financing insurance on business tort claims including negligent interference with prospective economic advantage and intentional interference with contract; and
  • Successful trial defense of a national armored car company overcoming the presumption of common carrier liability to receive a full defense verdict.

Representative Clients

  • Archdiocese of Los Angeles-Roman Catholic Archbishop
  • Adventure Investments West, LLC
  • Avenue 26 Small Animal Hospital, Inc.
  • Board of Trustees of CA State University
  • Brain Surgery, Inc.
  • Budleigh, Inc.
  • Campclar, Inc.
  • Camp Technology, LLC
  • Catholic Charities of Los Angeles, Inc.
  • Claro Group, LLC
  • Clean Powers Solutions, LLC
  • CQ Properties, LLC
  • David H. Fell & Co., Inc.
  • Docusource, LLC
  • Double Ding, Inc.
  • Eco-Fiber Solutions, Inc.
  • Golden Spirits, Inc.
  • Greenstreet Advertising, Inc.
  • Harvard Drug Group, LLC
  • H. Starlet, LLC
  • Into Motion, Inc.
  • Laurel Grove Capital, LLC
  • Levels Music Group, LLC
  • Marge Carson, Inc.
  • Maven Technologies, LLC
  • Medx, Inc.
  • Native Company, Inc.
  • Objective Interface, Inc.
  • Paradigm Health, Inc.
  • Precision Medical Services, LLC
  • Shamrock Investments, Inc.
  • Simply Static, LLC
  • SLS International, Inc.
  • St. John’s Seminary
  • Southland Media, Inc.
  • Spot Runner, LLC
  • Tierra West Advisors, Inc.
  • U’SAgain, LLC
  • Valley Bank
  • Wimmer & Associates
  • Xavier University

Insurance Coverage

Smith & Myers specializes in all aspects of insurance coverage law, including advice, representation and litigation, declaratory relief actions, coverage opinions, insurance mediations, negotiation and counseling.

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We have worked with our clients to resolve hundreds of difficult and complex insurance-related disputes, whether through trial, mediation, arbitration, or settlement.

We have experience in a broad range of issues, which enables us to provide clients with excellent representation in all insurance coverage matters. We provide advice and strategies that identify coverage opportunities, protect against unnecessary losses, and obtain coverage from insurance policies through negotiation and litigation.

We provide comprehensive services to policyholders, including policy review, risk assessment, and coverage litigation. We have obtained successful outcomes for our clients in insurance coverage matters for commercial general liability (CGL), directors and officers liability, and employment practices liability policies.

Litigation

Smith & Myers handles a variety of litigation matters. We assist our individual and corporate clients through the difficult world of state and federal court litigation.

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Our goal is to help our clients resolve their legal disputes within the framework of their personal and/or professional objectives and needs. We have expertise litigating numerous areas of law, including employment lawsuits, trust and probate matters, construction disputes, contract claims, and business and corporate disputes. We are experienced in all aspects of the litigation and dispute resolution process – litigation in court, trial, mediation, arbitration, and post-trial appeals – and aggressively pursue our clients’ interests without losing sight of the overall objective and common sense.

We work closely with our clients to provide the most effective and appropriate representation in a wide variety of situations and to obtain the best result in a cost-efficient manner. We always keep in mind the larger context in which a legal dispute may have occurred and focus on what our client wants and what is the best way to achieve that goal.

Trust and Probate Litigation

Smith & Myers is experienced in handling all types of litigation relating to probate and trusts. We act as counsel to one of the largest Catholic dioceses in the country – the Archdiocese of Los Angeles – and in doing so represent the Roman Catholic Archbishop, Catholic Charities, and St. John’s Seminary in a wide variety of litigation. We have also handled litigation on behalf of Trustees, beneficiaries, probate estates, creditors and fiduciaries involving trust interpretation, no-contest clauses, undue influence, care custodian restrictions on transfer, and elder abuse.

Representative cases include:

  • Representing a major California University in multi-million dollar trust litigation. The Trustee contended the version of the trust granting a one-third interest to the University was fraudulent and should be voided. We aggressively challenged the fraud claim and ultimately settled for the entire amount of the gift plus an additional amount to offset costs and fees.
  • Successful summary judgment defeating a surviving spouse’s claim on the trust of her deceased husband based on the one-year-after-death limitations bar to all claims, including alimony and support.
  • Successful mediation to receive a six-figure gift for a beneficiary whose claim was challenged as wiped out by a series of 11 trust amendments that resulted in conflicting distribution plans and involved the deceased’s state of mind when preparing the amendments, undue influence claims, and challenges to the validity and enforceability of the amendments.

Business Litigation

Business litigation disputes include those involving public and closely-held corporations, general and limited partnerships, sole proprietorships, professionals and individuals. These matters have involved many diverse claims, including breach of contract, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, fraudulent transfer of assets, tortious interference with contract and prospective economic advantage, partnership disputes and dissolutions, and negligence.

Smith & Myers’ business transaction/litigation experience includes:

  • Successful summary judgment defense in a multi-million-dollar film financing litigation involving major studios and London-backed film financing insurance on business tort claims including negligent interference with prospective economic advantage and intentional interference with contract.
  • Successful trial defense of a national armored car company overcoming the presumption of common carrier liability to receive a full defense verdict.
  • Favorably settled business partnership disputes involving provisional directorships, transfer of shares in a privately owned company and compensation for breach of a majority-owner’s duties of loyalty and good faith to the minority shareholders.
  • Successful mediated settlement of multiple litigations involving non-compete restrictions on a party’s use of confidential information to establish a competing enterprise.

Employment Litigation

Employment litigation includes defending claims for wrongful termination, harassment, and discrimination in state and federal court, as well as in alternative dispute forums such as mediation and arbitration. They are often resolved through mediation, but sometimes culminate in binding arbitration or a jury or bench trial. Those trials enable us to better advise clients early in the litigation process about settlement and the intricacies of a trial, should one be required.

Smith & Myers’ employment litigation experience includes:

  • We have successfully defended clients at trial and in binding arbitration against harassment, retaliation, discrimination, and defamation claims brought in connection with wrongful termination lawsuits.
  • We have ended numerous employment lawsuits early by successfully obtaining summary judgment of all claims against our client.
  • We have achieved favorable resolutions of numerous wage and hour disputes before the Labor Commissioner regarding overtime, rest period, and wage claims.
  • We have obtained numerous successfully mediated settlements of employment claims.

Insurance Coverage Litigation

Smith & Myers’ insurance coverage litigation practice involves representing its clients in state and federal court lawsuits arising out of a dispute over insurance coverage. Most insurance coverage claims do not lead to litigation, but some do. Smith & Myers has represented clients in numerous declaratory relief actions.

Smith & Myers’ insurance coverage litigation experience includes:

  • We have represented numerous developers seeking a defense and indemnity from their liability insurer in response to construction defect lawsuits.
  • We have represented clients seeking coverage under their D&O and E&O policies.
  • We have represented clients seeking coverage under their homeowners and auto insurance policies.
  • We have represented clients seeking coverage for unfair competition, false advertising, trademark infringement, and unfair business practices claims asserted against them.
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