chair of the Judiciary Commit- tee in 2008, Cheng was elected to serve on the Board of Direc- tors in 2009. “BASF is the most impressive legal service organi- zation in the Bay Area. It works for the benefit of lawyers, San Francisco residents and homeless citizens, and our youth. It has a powerful voice in our legislature and judiciary. It also has such a diverse membership base,” she says. “BASF has exposed me to a wide variety of practice areas and given me an opportunity to participate in relevant current events and legal topics that af- fect all lawyers and our society.”
This past year, she served as an advocacy coach for Lowell High School in BASF’s high school mock trial competition. Cheng also teaches at her alma mater, serving as the coprogram director for the school’s Intensive Advocacy Program. Over the past two years, she has taught trial advocacy to prosecutors and defense attorneys in association with the United States Department of Justice in Eastern Europe. She has made multiple trips to Pristina, Kosovo, and Skopje, Macedonia. “It’s very exciting. There are several countries all around the world moving toward an adversarial system. The United States adversarial system has been regarded as the role model for an in- dependent and fair judiciary,” she says. She has also taught advocacy skills to solicitor advocates in North- ern Ireland and lawyers in Mexicali, Mexico. She cur- rently serves as the coprogram director of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy’s Western Region Teacher Training Program.
For these works and others, Cheng has been recognized as a Northern California “Super lawyer” and as one of the Best Lawyers in America. “I’m better because esteemed organizations like BASF give me a place to serve,” says Cheng.
Gilbert Purcell Brayton Purcell
“Go ahead. Ask me anything. I’m in a great mood,” says Gilbert Purcell of Brayton Purcell.
After seven months, two trials, three separate trial phases, Purcell won a $41 million verdict against Kaiser Gypsum Company, Inc. Purcell’s client worked for forty years as a plumber in San Fran- cisco’s high-rise buildings and as a result was repeatedly exposed to asbestos. He now suffers from me- sothelioma, a fatal cancer of the lining of the lungs.
After a three week trial and a half day of deliberations a unanimous San Francisco jury found Kaiser Gypsum, a manufacturer of joint compounds and wallboard mate- rials, guilty of acting with oppression or malice by clear and convincing evidence. The jury awarded a $20 mil- lion punitive damages verdict. “I believe this was the first punitive damage assessment ever awarded against one of the Kaiser Gypsum companies,” says Purcell. “I’m very relieved because my client is a good, deserv- ing man, and I didn’t want to let him down.”
In a previous trial, a San Francisco jury ruled that Kaiser Gypsum and FDCC California, Inc. (formerly known as Dinwiddie Construction Company), a general con- tractor, were negligent and found that Kaiser Gypsum’s products were defectively designed and the companies failed to warn of the product defect. In that matter, the jury awarded Purcell’s client $1.273 million in eco- nomic damages, $15 million in noneconomic damages, and $5 million in loss of consortium damages.
Widely regarded as the premiere asbestos trial attor- ney, Purcell tried his first asbestos case in 1986 in front of California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald M.
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