Legal Services & Lawyers

MICHA STAR LIBERTY is a civil rights attorney specializing in litigating serious injury, civil rights, sexual abuse, consumer, and employment matters in both individual and class actions. She is a certified mediator with over 40 hours of training who performs mediation for the Contra Costa Superior Court.

A frequent lecturer and widely published author, Ms. Liberty focuses much of her public speaking on trial practice, discovery techniques, the importance of mentoring, and the best practices for opening a law office and law office management. Additionally, she speaks on the topic of women in politics.

Ms. Liberty is a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Born in San Francisco, California, Ms. Liberty is a member of the California bar and is admitted to practice in the United States District Court for the Northern, Eastern, Central and Southern Districts of California. She is also admitted to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Ms. Liberty has worked at the White House and for two Members of Congress, first for U.S. Representative Mel Watt, from North Carolina, and then for U.S. Representative Anna Eshoo. She has also served as a judicial extern to Senior United States District Court Judge Thelton E. Henderson. While in law school, she served as a Moot Court Board member and teaching assistant and an editor for the Womenâs Law Journal.

A proud plaintiffs' attorney, Ms. Liberty has taken a leadership role professionally. Ms. Liberty is the Treasurer and on Executive Committee of the Alameda-Contra Costa Trial Lawyers Association (former Editor in Chief of The Verdict magazine). She actively serves on the governing boards of the following organizations: Consumer Attorneys of California, the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association (Women's Caucus and Chair of the New Lawyers), the Congress of Neutrals, the California Young Lawyers Association, and New Lawyers Division Board of Governors for AAJ. She is also a member of the Earl Warren Inn of Court, Public Justice Foundation, and a Emerge-California graduate. She is a former board member of the Women's Section of the Contra Costa County Bar, and Past Chair of the Contra Costa County Bar Association's Barristers Section.

Ms. Liberty is also leader in her community. She is the President of the National Women's Political Caucus (San Francisco), in that function she strives to recruit, support and endorse female candidates for political office. She testifies at the Board of Supervisors on issues that impact the lives of women and girls locally and frequently gives political commentary for local news outlets.

Tim Hoffman is a pioneering California attorney with a storied, 45-year legal career, during which he has helped recover more than $1 billion for his worthy clients. Mr. Hoffman has successfully tried dozens of matters to verdict, specializing in complex civil cases, and has litigated over 200 arbitrations. He has practiced in Oakland, CA, since 1971, and was most recently selected for inclusion in 2009 Northern California Super Lawyers.

Since the mid-1990's, Mr. Hoffman has been a leader among plaintiffs' employment lawyers, scoring huge victories for classes of thousands of employees at Pacific Bell (who recovered $36 million), Macy's, Starbucks, and many other Fortune 500 companies. In overtime class actions, Mr. Hoffman has represented misclassified assistant managers, stockbrokers, truck drivers, and reservation clerks, among many other categories of employees. Among employees forced to work off-the-clock, Mr. Hoffman has represented classes of handymen, janitors, bike and driver messengers, and others. Mr. Hoffman has represented victims of sexual harassment and numerous other forms of discrimination.

Mr. Hoffman has also specialized in consumer protection cases, including, for example, class actions against credit card companies, and a current case against termite-protection providers Orkin and Terminex, who misrepresent the nature of their services and provide false guarantees to customers.

Other current cases on which Mr. Hoffman is working include: Mevorah v. Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, regarding misclassified loan officers denied overtime; Chu v. Wells Fargo, regarding misclassified stockbrokers denied overtime; and Contreras v. Bank of America, regarding misclassified personal bankers denied overtime.

Mr. Hoffman's best known cases, the Continental Can class actions, alone recovered nearly half a billion dollars from the company after a four-month trial. The company had been discriminating against employees based upon their pension benefits, a practice prohibited under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). In that case, the company was shutting down plants based upon how many employees in each location would soon vest their full pensions, laying off wholesale any employees whose benefits were about to vest.

Among Mr. Hoffman's favorite career moments were: having lunch with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Alabama when Mr. Hoffman was a member of the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council; defending famed 60's radical Abbie Hoffman in a free speech case; preceding current President Barack Obama as a Chicago community organizer and attorney in Chicago Legal Aid; introducing Cesar Chavez at a banquet for the National Hispanic University, where Mr. Hoffman served as General Counsel and a founding member of the Board of Trustees; successfully settling his own whistleblower retaliation case, after he (as a then-Presidential appointee) reported a federal government manager's improprieties; serving as President of his American Federation of Government Employees Union Local, and a member of the San Francisco Labor Council, and representing the Communication Workers of America Local for the last 38 years; volunteering on the Board of Visitors to College of Arts & Sciences at Howard University; and, playing craps with Thurgood Marshall in Puerto Rico.

Mr. Hoffman is a native of Chicago, IL, an alumnus of the University of Illinois (in Champagne, IL), a former President of Oakland's Beth Jacob Congregation, and former Board member of the Anti-Defamation League.

He has been practicing law with Arthur Lazear for more than 30 years, is married, and has four children.