Greer, James Justin

GMSR partner Feris Greenberger loves research and writing. In her student days, she was always delighted to hear that a course required a lengthy term paper. On graduating from law school, she longed to find a specialty that tapped into her bookish passions. It took a few years, but she found what she was looking for in civil appellate practice at GMSR.

In over twenty years with the firm, Feris has briefed more than 200 matters in the state and federal appellate courts. She has appeared in the California Supreme Court and in every district of the California Court of Appeal. She has handled appeals and writs in a wide array of subject matter areas, including insurance, employment, landlord-tenant, contracts, premises liability, and medical and legal malpractice – to name just the first topics that come to mind. Perhaps her favorite thing about being an appellate lawyer is that she's constantly learning something new.

One of Feris's fondest appellate memories is of the time when she and Irving Greines persuaded the Court of Appeal to grant rehearing in Bohan v. Cabeau, 2d Civil No. B096717, a matter in which they weren't involved, and in which no one had asked them to intervene. In the original published opinion in Bohan, the Court dismissed the appeal on the ground that the notice of appeal was filed too late. Convinced that the Court had misinterpreted the applicable rule of court, Feris and Irving submitted two letter briefs urging the Court to reinstate the appeal, and the Court did, ultimately ruling in the appellant's favor on the merits. Since it's hard to get rehearing even under normal conditions (that is, when we actually represent one of the parties), this was particularly sweet.

Feris is active in the Los Angeles County Bar Association's State Appellate Judicial Evaluation Committee. She served as a Temporary Judge on the old Los Angeles Municipal Court. She was a consultant on the CEB practice guide, Civil Appellate Practice (3d ed. 1996), and recently authored What Every Lawyer Should Know About Effective Alternative Research Techniques, County Bar Update, Vol. 26, No. 2 (February 2006).

Feris received her bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from USC in 1977. She received her law degree from UCLA School of Law in 1980, where she served as a Comment Editor on the UCLA Law Review. Following law school, Feris, like several of her GMSR colleagues, had the good fortune to clerk for Otto M. Kaus, then Presiding Justice of the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Five. When Justice Kaus told her, a few days before the public announcement, that he was being appointed to the California Supreme Court, it was one of the most thrilling secrets she was ever asked to keep. Between her judicial clerkship and joining GMSR in 1984, she spent three years teaching legal writing at USC's Gould School of Law.

Feris enjoys reading, cooking, theater and movie going, and doting on her nieces and nephews. She has been married since 1983 to UCLA School of Law Professor David Dolinko, who, contrary to persistent UCLAW folklore, was not one of her law school professors. (She insists they were classmates.)