Yerman, Bruce A.

Stanton T. Mathews is widely known as a trial lawyer. For more than twenty-five years Stanton T. Mathews, has continuously held an AV rating denoting the highest level of legal ability and adherence to the code of professional responsibility. The national lawyer rating organization only awards this designation after a confidential survey that records the cumulative opinions of the judiciary and attorney’s before whom and with whom Mr. Mathews practices on a daily basis. Less than five percent of all attorneys achieve an AV rating. Still further, within the group of AV rated lawyers Mr. Mathews enjoys an additional distinction, “Preeminent Lawyer.”Mr. Mathews AV peers awarded him preeminent status as he is one of the most highly regarded AV attorneys in his area of expertise, personal injury trial work.

Mr. Mathews and his firm focus their expertise on the prosecution of civil wrongdoers, individual, corporate and governmental, whose conduct has caused personal injury and economic loss.

Mr. Mathews was trial counsel on the first successful case in U.S. history for fraud against a general aviation manufacturer. In that case the jury agreed with and followed the direction given by Mr. Mathews in his prosecution and held the manufacturer accountable for the economic harm caused by its defective product and also held the manufacturer to account and pay for the grief and distress caused by its fraudulent conduct.

In another case, Mr. Mathews prevailed in his prosecution of the Los Angeles Police Department for the unlawful use of a nightstick just months before the same City Attorney and police department successfully defended itself for its officers’ use of their nightsticks in the Rodney King beating case.

Insurance companies that harass, delay, underpay, and deny payment on insurance claims have been a regular focus of the firm. Mr. Mathews prosecuted one such case for a young serviceman rendered a paraplegic when hit in his vehicle by a big rig on a snowy pass near Vail Colorado. In prosecuting the case, Mr. Mathews held the trucking company to account for the economic loss to the young man for future lost earnings, medical expenses and for living modifications. He also obtained compensation for the loss in the quality of the young man’s life caused by the injury. The public at large also benefited from Mr. Mathews work on this case when he obtained a ruling in a published opinion by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeal that favorably advanced the law holding insurance companies more accountable to their policyholders.

The successful prosecution of the Colorado case lead to a request for Mr. Mathews to represent a California man. A big rig truck ran over the young man causing near fatal injuries. In this case, Mr. Mathews successfully met the challenge of three eyewitnesses all of whom believed and testified they watched the man ride his bicycle into the path of the truck. As an experienced trial lawyer, Mr. Mathews knew eyewitness testimony is highly unreliable, and he recognized that perception reaction time was going to be a key factor to understanding how this “accident” occurred. Mr. Mathews assembled a team of engineering experts that provided Mr. Mathews with the opportunity to present a scientific work up to the jury explaining with the aide of computer graphics how the accident actually occurred. The result was a unanimous verdict from the jury and an unwelcome backhanded compliment by the trial judge.

The trial of that case was before a long time trial judge/retired chief appellate court justice that the presiding judge of the superior court asked, by way of special assignment, to hear the case because of its complexity. Following the jury verdict, the trial judge asked to speak with trial counsel in his chambers. After complimenting defense counsel, he turned to Mr. Mathews and stated, “In all my years on the bench you are probably the most persuasive attorney I have had before me. In fact, that is the very problem you are too persuasive. I was flabbergasted by the size of the verdict and I am going to reduce the verdict unless you can reach a settlement with defense counsel.”

Although medical negligence cases are among the more difficult cases to prosecute and win, they can be the most rewarding. Mr. Mathews recently represented a baby who was severely brain damaged during the labor process prior to the baby’s birth. The United States Attorney’s office defended the case in the United States Federal District Court in Oakland California. A doctor, working for the U.S. Government, erred in allowing a 19- year- old first time mom to labor for more than 36 hours. When the child was born with severe brain damage the Government alleged that the first moment the doctor noticed fetal distress he reacted timely and appropriately and while sympathizing with the mother, the child was just one of the unfortunate statistics of childbirth. Mr. Mathews retained top physicians from Stanford, the University of San Francisco and a respected OB physician and professor from San Diego to educate the Court on the medicine and using the fetal monitor strip ,the team of experts identified “red flags” that should have been recognized throughout the labor. After the case rested, the court awarded a high multi-million dollar verdict, every dollar requested by Mr. Mathews, to provide for the appropriate medical care the child will need the rest of his life.

At times Mr. Mathews trial practice has lead him into new and less charted legal waters. Mr. Mathews tried one of the early third party criminal attack premises cases in Orange County California representing a young woman who was the victim of a criminal attack, attempted rape/murder on the premises of a nationwide realty firm.

There has been considerable reporting by both the popular media, including CNN’s Anderson Cooper and the legal media on several civil rape/sexual battery cases prosecuted by Mr. Mathews. In one case, Mr. Mathews represented two young female police explorer scouts molested by their training officer, and in another, he represented a young woman drugged by a group of professional athletes with a date rape drug at a high- end hotel and gang raped.

Mr. Mathews practice is further exemplified by a punitive damage award in an employment wrongful termination case against a large grocery chain, a verdict against a national health care companies facility mandating change to a dangerous handicap ramp causing serious injury, he also prosecuted a large accounting firm on behalf of a multinational corporation exposed to tremendous tax liability, penalties, and prosecution by a number of states because of the negligence of the accounting firm, as well as obtaining a recovery for a young woman for the malpractice of the lawyers she had hired to handle a products liability case against an automobile manufacturer for the defect in their car that had caused her to become paraplegic.

In addition to frequent lectures on trial topics to his fellow California attorneys, Mr. Mathews drew on his breadth of litigation experience and courtroom skill to author ” California Causes of Action” to assist California attorneys in their work as litigators.

Mr. Mathews sums his practice up this way, I feel very fortunate to have chosen a career that affords an opportunity for so much satisfaction, while at the same time allowing me to enjoy what I love best, standing in the courtroom in front of a jury.