During these challenging times, Severson & Werson remains open and in full operation, consistent with the firm’s previously established contingency planning. While many of our attorneys and staff will be working remotely, as a firm, we continue in full operation. We are here to help, as always.

Effective, Experienced, Exceptional.

Firm Profile

Fiduciary Duty

Subscribe to California Appellate Tracker

Thank you for your desire to subscribe to Severson & Werson’s Appellate Tracker Weblog. In order to subscribe, you must provide a valid name and e-mail address. This too will be retained on our server. When you push the “subscribe button”, we will send an electronic mail to the address that you provided asking you to confirm your subscription to our Weblog. By pushing the “subscribe button”, you represent and warrant that you are over the age of 18 years old, are the owner/authorized user of that e-mail address, and are entitled to receive e-mails at that address. Our weblog will retain your name and e-mail address on its server, or the server of its web host. However, we won’t share any of this information with anyone except the Firm’s employees and contractors, except under certain extraordinary circumstances described on our Privacy Policy and (About The Consumer Finance Blog/About the Appellate Tracker Weblog) Page. NOTICE AND AGREEMENT REGARDING E-MAILS AND CALLS/TEXT MESSAGES TO LAND-LINE AND WIRELESS TELEPHONES: By providing your contact information and confirming your subscription in response to the initial e-mail that we send you, you agree to receive e-mail messages from Severson & Werson from time-to-time and understand and agree that such messages are or may be sent by means of automated dialing technology. If you have your email forwarded to other electronic media, including text messages and cellular telephone by way of VoIP, internet, social media, or otherwise, you agree to receive my messages in that way. This may result in charges to you. Your agreement and consent also extend to any other agents, affiliates, or entities to whom our communications are forwarded. You agree that you will notify Severson & Werson in writing if you revoke this agreement and that your revocation will not be effective until you notify Severson & Werson in writing. You understand and agree that you will afford Severson & Werson a reasonable time to unsubscribe you from the website, that the ability to do so depends on Severson & Werson’s press of business and access to the weblog, and that you may still receive one or more emails or communications from weblog until we are able to unsubscribe you.

Rivelli v. Hemm, No. H046878, 2021 Cal. App. LEXIS 634 (Ct. App. Aug. 2, 2021)

Straumann, a Swiss company, and its Swiss-resident officer, Hemm, established purposeful contacts with California by entering into an agreement to be the exclusive distributor outside the United States for Rodo, a California company making dental products.  Hemm was a member of Rodo's board at the time, but negotiated the exclusive distributorship as Straumann's agent.  Rodo's shareholders sued claiming that Rodo's… Read More

Bafford v. Northrup Grumman Corp. (9th Cir. 2021)

Using the website of the administrator hired by Northrup Grumman to manage its pension plan, plaintiffs submitted requests for the administrator to tell them the monthly pension benefit they would receive if they retired on a certain date.  The administrator miscalculated the benefit because it used the requesters' wages during their second period of employment by Northrup Grumman rather than… Read More

Anderson v, Edward D, Jones & Co., L.P. (9th Cir. 2021)

The district court wrongly dismissed this suit under SLUSA because plaintiffs did not allege a claim cognizable under federal securities laws.  They claimed that the defendant broker had switched their accounts from commission-based to fee-based without first performing a suitability analysis to see whether plaintiffs, who were buy-and-hold investors, would benefit from the change in fee structure.  That omission was… Read More

Cortese v. Sherwood

by Jan T. Chilton |

Code of Civil Procedure 1714.10, which requires prior court approval before filing a complaint charging an attorney with conspiring with his client in an attempt to contest or compromise a claim or dispute, can be invoked even if the complaint does not use the word conspiracy, so long as it alleges joint tortious action. Read More

Williamson v. Brooks

Substantial evidence supported the findings that defendant trustees did not breach their fiduciary duties by failing to tell plaintiff about her subtrust and that plaintiff suffered no damage from her asserted ignorance of the subtrust.  Read More