PARTNER CHRISTINE D. SPAGNOLI has obtained many multimillion-dollar verdicts, including in the 1999 General Motors case in which a defective fuel tank was found responsible for the burn injuries of two adults and four children. The jury returned with a landmark $4.9 billion verdict. She was co-counsel in the largest personal injury verdict in California, which resulted in a $58 million verdict for a man severely burned by a defective O-ring.
Chris is ranked as one of the Top 100 Most Influential Attorneys in California by the Los Angeles Daily Journal.
She plays a leading role in representing people injured in tire tread separation cases. She is a member of the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee for Ford/Firestone cases in California and participated in ground-breaking depositions of Ford witnesses including former CEOs Jacques Nasser and William Clay Ford, Jr.
Additionally, she is Plaintiffs' Liaison Counsel for Cooper Tire cases in California. Her representation of a former LAPD bomb squad officer paralyzed in a Goodyear tread separation case involving Goodyear LRE tires led to the opening of a NHTSA investigation and the voluntary recall of the tires. On another Goodyear matter, Chris was lead attorney on Frankel v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, which involved defective tires equipped on a large sport utility vehicle. The case settled confidentially.
Her achievements cover the full range of personal injury and product liability cases. Chris has earned widespread recognition for her work as co-counsel in the 2001 negligence case against Southern California Edison, which resulted in a $21 million verdict for an electrocuted avocado picker. Among her other cases are Brezovec v. State of California - $8.8 million, a brain/motor vehicle injury case, Ogden v. Hamm Brothers Construction - $6.4 million, a personal injury matter, and McGee v. The City of Alameda - $25 million, an electrocuted construction worker.
Chris was named Most Outstanding Young Trial Lawyer of 2001, the F. Scott Baldwin Award, by the American Association for Justice (AAJ), New Lawyers Division. She also received Loyola Law School's 2001 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award.
Within professional organizations, Chris has assumed numerous leadership positions. She was elected to the American Board of Trial Advocates, where she holds the rank of Associate. She was the 2002 president of the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles (CAALA). She served as First Vice-President of CAALA, in 2001, and has been on its Board of Governors since 1991. She is also a leader in the statewide Consumer Attorneys of California (CAOC), serving on its Board of Governors as an officer and Executive Committee member since 1996. Her other memberships include AAJ, where she served as an officer of the Product Liability section, Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, and the Attorneys Information Exchange Group, an organization specializing in automotive product liability cases. In 1998, she was appointed by the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court to the Civil Subcommittee of the Task Force on Jury Instructions, where she still serves.
Chris was named among the Top 50 Women Southern California Lawyers in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, and a Super Lawyer in the 2005 and 2007 Southern California Super Lawyers peer-nominated listings compiled and published by Law & Politics. She was named by Lawdragon.com to its inaugural list of "The Lawdragon 500 Plaintiffs Lawyers" in the United States. She was also named one of the Best Lawyers in America by Woodward/White, Inc. based on a survey of her peers.
From 1991-1994, Chris was Editor-in-Chief of the CAALA "Advocate," the organization's monthly publication. In 1995, she was Editor-in-Chief of the CAOC "Forum," a statewide trial lawyers monthly publication. She also is the co-author of a CAOC Amicus Brief in Soule v. General Motors (1994) in which the California Supreme Court rejected manufacturers' efforts to overturn landmark strict liability consumer expectation tests. As a frequent lecturer and author, Chris has shared her expertise on various trial techniques including demonstrative evidence, direct and cross examination methods, written discovery and demonstrating head trauma injury in children. Among the organizations she has addressed are CAALA, CAOC, AAJ, Los Angeles County Bar Association, and Western Trial Lawyers Association.