Innovative & Successful Trial Attorneys
At Matheny Sears Linkert & Jaime, LLP we take pride in our reputation as innovative and successful trial attorneys with decades of litigation experience. We are trial attorneys who actually try cases. The two named partners have been elected as members of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) and many of our other attorneys have first-chaired their own trials. We have earned a statewide reputation for
effective defense strategies that produce favorable resolutions, including dispositive motion and favorable settlements. If a case has to be tried, we are fully prepared to take the case to a jury-even on short notice and are proud of our track record.
Defending Catastrophic Exposure Cases Throughout California
We take pride in being a boutique trial firm capable of defending catastrophic exposure cases in a variety of scenarios that include personal injuries, products liability, transportation and trucking, premises liability, wildfire litigation, public entity (dangerous condition and sexual abuse), major construction defect cases, and employment litigation. Our ability to hold down damages using innovative litigation resolution strategies, effective dispositive motions, and trial spans the last 40 years. We are also proud of our record of defense verdicts in difficult cases.
Cases of Interest
Murphy v. Pina 2025 WL 2938007
There was no evidence of warning signs of theft or security problems. The Court of Appeal concluded that the special circumstances doctrine did not apply in this case. The court affirmed the summary judgment.
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Rifkind v. Superior Court 22 Cal. App.4th 1255
A court may not require a deponent to answer “legal contention” questions at his or her deposition, for example, to state all facts, list all witnesses, and identify all documents that support or pertain to a particular contention in the deponent’s pleadings. These questions, while entirely appropriate for written interrogatories, are not proper at a party’s deposition.
READ MOREOrtiz v. Daimler Truck North America LLC Court of Appeals, Third District, California 2025 WL 1778776
The case involved claims of strict products liability and negligence against Daimler Trucks following the death of the plaintiffs’ mother, Ortiz. She was killed when a commercial truck traveling over 55 miles per hour rear-ended her car at a red light. Raising design defect and negligent design claims, the plaintiffs alleged that Daimler Trucks should be held liable for their mother's death because it failed to equip the truck with a collision avoidance system. That system warns drivers when it detects a collision risk with a stationary object, including stopped traffic, and can automatically stop the truck when the driver fails to act. Daimler Trucks manufactured that system, but not all trucks were equipped with it.
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