Monthly Archives: April 2012

Success is not just a matter of having superior knowledge and experience. Success also comes from knowing how to apply that expertise from a different point of view.

When our private sector clients are involved in land use litigation, it falls into two broad categories. Usually it’s getting some sort of approval that a local government isn’t willing to give. Other times it involves resolving neighborhood opposition — either through consensual discussions or, if necessary, by crushing them.

But in recent litigation, Cameron Artigue applied his experience on behalf of the local government. A private developer in one of Arizona’s outlying counties devised a clever scheme to circumvent local zoning and subdivision laws.

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Rick Mahrle at Gammage & Burnham served as lead counsel in an arbitration governed by the AAA’s international arbitration rules. Rick represented a London-based consumer products company that had a dispute with an Arizona company that licensed its patented products to the London company to sell throughout the European Union. The dispute centered on the proper interpretation of the license agreement that had been drafted years earlier by non-lawyers. This was truly a “bet the company” type of litigation, as had the London-based company lost the arbitration, it would no longer have been allowed to sell its primary product line and undoubtedly would have closed down.

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A former Arizona public official was being sued in federal court on claims arising out of his official duties. After a devastating jury verdict was rendered against the public official, the insurance company that should have been paying the judgment and providing him with representation on appeal denied coverage, leaving the public official to pay out of his own pocket the costs of the appeal and paying off the judgment. The trial team at Gammage & Burnham, led by Rick Mahrle, filed suit against the insurance company. Following a trial, the jury found that the insurer wrongfully denied coverage. The damages and attorneys’ fees awarded exceeded $4.5 million.

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Clients want the best of all worlds: aggressive tax planning that yields optimum tax advantages but with assurance that their plan will not be the topic of discussion within the Internal Review Service or wind up on the docket of the United States Tax Court.

Estate planning clients are often torn between the desire to remove assets from their estates to avoid or minimize estate tax exposure, yet extremely reluctant to release control over assets. There is further reticence to place readily available funds in the hands of the younger generation who are perceived to be ill-equipped to handle substantial wealth, especially in the face of high divorce rates and a very litigious society.

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Lisa Hauser has substantial experience in assisting government clients comply with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, and its corresponding regulations. Section 5 requires that jurisdictions receive preclearance by the Voting Section, Civil Rights Division, United States Department of Justice, before implementing any voting change. In 2010, the Pinal County Community College District discovered that its existing districts had never received preclearance. On further examination, the District learned that none of its district maps adopted since the early 1970s had ever been submitted to the Department of Justice. Lisa worked with the District and the Department of Justice to resolve more than three decades of unprecleared maps.

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