Ms. Pánuco is an employment and civil rights attorney at Hadsell Stormer Richardson & Renick, LLP. She represents clients in individual and class action cases involving employment discrimination, harassment, wrongful termination, retaliation for whistleblowing, wage and hour law violations, civil rights, police misconduct, free speech rights, and international human rights. She practices in state and federal trial courts and courts of appeal, representing clients at all stages of litigation.
Ms. Pánuco received her J.D. from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles and her B.S. from the University of Southern California. At Loyola, Ms. Pánuco was on Loyola’s 2009 Regional Championship winning trial advocacy team, was Co-President of La Raza de Loyola, co-founded the La Raza Moot Court Team, coordinated Loyola’s Young Lawyers Program, and published an article on the rights of undocumented workers in the inaugural edition of the Los Angeles Public Interest Law Journal. http://www.lapilj.org/uploads/1/7/9/9/1799330/panuco_-_final.pdf.
In law school, Ms. Pánuco externed with the Immigration Center for Women and Children, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, in the Chambers of then United States Magistrate Judge Jeffrey W. Johnson, and in the Office of the Federal Public Defender. She began her legal career as one of ten post-graduate fellows through the prestigious American Board of Trial Advocates Fellowship Program. As a fellow Ms. Pánuco was placed in the chambers of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Stern and at the firms of Greene, Broillet & Wheeler, LLP and Reback, McAndrews, Kjar, Warford, & Stockalper LLP. Ms. Pánuco was the first female to be honored with the American Board of Trial Advocates Award for excellence in trial advocacy while serving as an ABOTA Fellow.
At HSRR Ms. Pánuco’s practice is focused on the rights of employees, workers, and the underrepresented in noteworthy cases. Since 2010 she has represented Mr. Obaidullah, a prisoner held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba since 2002, in his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. In just her first year of practice, she traveled to Guantánamo and was on the trial team that challenged his continued detention during a merits hearing in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. She is on the team appealing the denial of his petition to the D.C. Circuit and potentially the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Obaidullah v. Obama et al.. Ms. Pánuco also serves as class counsel in Pierce v. County of Orange et al. – a class action successfully challenging the conditions for disabled inmates at the Orange County jails. A federal court has issued an injunction ordering the jails to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act by June 2013. In Rodriguez v. City of Los Angeles et al., Ms. Pánuco represents a class of thousands of youth served with gang injunctions containing unconstitutional curfew provisions. Additionally in Steffens v. Regus, Ms. Pánuco successfully argued an appeal of a grant of summary judgment before the Ninth Circuit in 2012. The ruling of the Ninth Circuit means a wrongfully terminated whistleblower will proceed to trial on her claims against her employer.
After just two years in practice, Ms. Pánuco was named to the Southern California Super Lawyers® - Rising Stars list in 2012, and to Los Angeles Magazine’s Top Attorneys in Southern California – 2012 Rising Stars list. She has served on the board of one of the largest Latino bar associations in the nation, the Mexican American Bar Association, each year since 2010 and was elected to the 2013 executive board. She is also on the Young Lawyers Committee of the Latina Lawyers Bar Association, and Loyola’s Junior Alumni Advisory Group. As a native Spanish speaker, Ms. Pánuco also occasionally appears as a guest commentator on Univision’s know your rights segment, “Conozca sus derechos.”
Prior to law school, Ms. Pánuco worked for three years in the Washington, DC Office of Congressman Xavier Becerra as a Legislative Assistant and Deputy Press Secretary.
