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I’m a native Californian, in fact, a native san Francisco and California is a fascinating place. The diversity is amazing and that’s what makes it to some people a judicial hellhole that is a venue where defendants don’t want to try cases. And because the plaintiff chooses the point of filing, we end up with a lot of cases in California that involve products or activities that never occurred in California. In fact, we have some cases in California where the only product activity or exposure occurred in other countries. Let me give you an example, I was involved with a case called Sabettian v. Exxon. It was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Mr. Sabettian worked at the Avidin Refinery in Iran. That’s where all of this asbestos exposure occurred. We were successful in persuading the court in Los Angeles to apply Iranian law rather than California law to the case. That was very important because of the difference in law. Iran does not allow punitive damages, does not have strict product liability, and does not have joint several liability. So all of the liability is several only. The application of Iranian law dramatically reduced the value of the plaintiff’s case.
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San Francisco, CA commercial litigation attorney Edward Hugo talks about a memorable choice of law case.