“It’s a very useful tool to help liti- gants get someone else’s read on their case,” she says. “By volunteering, you are helping the community at large.”
And that seems to be Eskin’s main motivator. “Empowering one client is the first step in making things bet- ter for everyone.”
Daniel Feinberg Lewis, Feinberg, Lee, Renaker & Jackson
For more than twenty years, Daniel Feinberg has been a plaintiff ’s law- yer, specializing in employee benefits litigation, including claims relating to pension, medical, and disability benefits. “I never thought about working at a corporate firm,” says Feinberg, a partner at Lewis, Feinberg, Lee, Renaker & Jackson in Oakland. “My personality is to be a plaintiff ’s lawyer.”
For the past three years, he has served as cocounsel for journalists and staff who participated in the Tribune Company’s Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). In 2007, the Tribune Company, which owns the Chica- go Tribune and Los Angeles Times, was put up for sale. In a complicated financial arrangement, real estate investor Sam Zell took control—with the ESOP as nominal pur- chaser, leaving the company heavily leveraged and the ESOP holding $250 million of unregistered shares from Tribune Co., shares that can’t readily be traded. Tribune filed for bankruptcy in 2008.
In November 2010, the federal judge granted the plain- tiffs’ motion for partial summary judgment against Great- Banc, the ESOP trustee, for the purchase of this stock, a transaction prohibited by the Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). In February 2011, the judge denied GreatBanc’s summary judgment motion to cap plaintiff ’s damages at either $2.8 million—the cash payment made on the loan prior to Tribune’s bank- ruptcy—or $15.3 million—in principal and interest paid. Then in March 2011, the judge granted plaintiff ’s
36 FALL 2011
motion for class certification and appointed Feinberg and co- counsel as counsel for the class.
“Essentially, the ESOP was left holding the bag in this deal,” says Feinberg. The class includes eleven thousand em- ployees and former employees who were participants in the Tribune ESOP.
Feinberg has also served as class counsel in more than a dozen cases seeking forfeited vacation benefits on behalf of employees of companies such as Kelly Ser- vices, Securitas, and Providian. During the last couple years, however, the Tribune matter
has taken up most of his time.
To stay on top of his field, Feinberg taps into The Bar Association of San Francisco’s continuing legal educa- tion program to stay on top of a range of topics. “BASF has the highest-quality programs,” says Feinberg, who received the BASF Foundation’s 2006 Champion of Justice Award and who now serves on the foundation’s board of directors. “It provides an important forum where people can talk, get new ideas, and make new connections, all of which is critical for doing your work and doing it well.”
With his practice built primarily around ERISA, the big- gest change in his practice over the years has not been a particular law or court case, but technology. “When I started, I’d go through a mountain of documents, re- viewing them manually,” he says. “Now they are up- loaded on cloud-based data systems. You can easily search and analyze documents in ways that couldn’t have been done before. The downside? There are a lot more documents to view with emails and electronic records.”
In addition to his practice, Feinberg does a lot of pro bono work. “My firm volunteers for the AIDS Legal Referral Panel,” he says. The organization provides free or low-cost legal assistance to people living with HIV
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