About Our Firm

We specialize in bankruptcy and insolvency matters, representing companies in financial distress or their creditors. Our clients are debtors, private and public debt and equity holders, trade creditors, creditors' committees, equity committees, chapter 11 trustees and examiners, landlords and purchasers of assets from troubled companies. We have worked in many industries, including financial services, retailing, healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, food processing, hospitality, residential and multi-family housing, entertainment, public utilities, telecommunications, and natural resources. We have also represented numerous state agencies as regulators and creditors in bankruptcy cases around the country.

For example, after a statewide interview process in January of 2001, the Attorney General of California selected our firm to be bankruptcy counsel for several state agencies in the Pacific Gas & Electric ("PG&E") chapter 11 case. We represented various state agencies before the San Francisco Bankruptcy Court throughout the PG&E case, including the agencies' opposition to confirmation of PG&E 's "disaggregation and deregulation" reorganization plan.

Our PG&E engagement has led us to represent additional California state agencies in other high profile reorganizations, including Worldcom, Enron, NRG, and currently Pacific Lumber.

In the spring of 2000, the Tri Valley Growers ("TVG") unsecured creditors' committee selected our firm over several large firms to be committee counsel representing over $200 million of pre-petition trade debt. At the time it filed chapter 11, TVG was the largest grower-owned fruit and vegetable processing company on the West Coast. We represented the TVG creditors' committee during the crucial 2000 operating season, and we continue to represent the creditors as they pursue recoveries from third parties, including officers, directors, professional advisors, and creditors that received preferences. As lead counsel for preference recoveries, we filed over 250 preference actions, and we have recovered a substantial sum that the committee is using to fund its litigation against third parties.

To obtain each of these major engagements, we competed successfully against some of the largest and best-known law firms in the state of California and elsewhere.

Our experience in local, regional, and national mega cases gives us the perspective and creativity necessary to help our clients reach their goals both in and out of court. Institutional clients, which we regularly represent on a wide variety of matters, include the Attorney General of the State of California, the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), The Equitable Life Assurance Society, First Northern Bank, First US Community Credit Union, and Union Bank of California. In addition, we often represent businesses from various industries that are in financial trouble. We assist them in turning around their businesses and restructuring their debt.

Typically, our clients hire us to resolve complex legal and financial problems involving many parties. We often work with lawyers from other law firms, as well as turnaround specialists, to litigate or settle complicated matters such as lender liability and bad faith allegations, complex construction claims, environmental clean-up issues, and plant closures and other labor-related issues. Alone, or as part of a team of professionals, we are ready to bring our bankruptcy expertise to bear on the resolution of our clients' problems.