Matthew Bender Practice Guide: Federal Pretrial Civil Procedure in California

Fern Smith, United States District Judge (Ret.), Northern District of California. Judge Smith was appointed District Judge for the Northern District of California in 1988. She practiced with Bronson, Bronson, & McKinnon, San Francisco, from 1976-1986, and served as a Judge of the Superior Court of California from 1986-1988. Judge Smith served as director of the Federal Judicial Center in Washington D.C. from 1999-2003. At the completion of her 4-year assignment at the FJC, she returned to the U.S. District Court in San Francisco where she retired from office as of June 30, 2005. Judge Smith actively participates in international judicial delegations involved in the modernization of legal processes in countries throughout the world. She received her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1975.

Hon, Richard Seeborg was appointed to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California by President Barack Obama in 2009. He has served as Chief Judge since 2021. Judge Seeborg served as Magistrate Judge for the United States District Court from 2001–2009. He received his B.A. degree, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Yale College in 1978. Upon graduating from Columbia University School of Law in 1981, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, Judge Seeborg served (1981–1982) as a law clerk to United States District Judge John H. Pratt in Washington, D.C. In 1982, he joined Morrison & Foerster’s San Francisco office in the litigation department, becoming a partner with the firm in 1987. From 1991 to 1998, Judge Seeborg served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California in San Jose. In that capacity, he acted as lead prosecutor on a wide range of complex white collar criminal matters. He re-joined Morrison & Foerster in March 1998, where he resumed a litigation practice in the fields of securities, intellectual property, and general commercial matters.

Judge Seeborg has been a member of the Adjunct Faculty at Santa Clara University School of Law where he has served as instructor for a course on Federal Criminal Litigation and has served as co-chair of the Federal Courts Committee of the Santa Clara County Bar Association and as a member of the Executive Committee of Magistrate Judges for the Ninth Circuit. In addition, he has served as a member of the Working Group on Electronic Public Access for the United States Courts and a member of the Ninth Circuit Jury Instructions Committee.

Richard B. Kendall is a partner with Kendall Brill & Kelly LLP. His practice focuses on complex litigation, and his experience spans more than four decades, several continents, and leading judicial and arbitration forums worldwide.

A former federal prosecutor, Mr. Kendall has prevailed in every one of the dozens of civil trials and arbitrations in which he has served as lead counsel representing both the defense and plaintiff sides. Over time, he has become the go-to litigator and trial counsel for his clients, some of whom, like Paramount and MTV, that he has represented for more than 25 years.

Mr. Kendall has argued and successfully resolved sophisticated, contentious, and unprecedented challenges to the First Amendment and the rights of privacy and publicity. He has argued on preemption of state consumer laws and environmental claims against the military before the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition, Mr. Kendall also litigated asset confiscation and recovery claims that were connected to the fall of Saigon and the overthrow of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos.

His courtroom background includes serving as lead trial counsel in dozens of trials and appeals in the federal and state courts, including two arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Hollywood Reporter has recognized him as a Power Lawyer multiple years, and the other leading Hollywood publication, Variety, has named him one of the industry’s leading lawyers for the last three years. In addition, the prestigious Chambers & Partners legal ranking organization has repeatedly ranked him among the top media and entertainment litigators since 2004. It also has quoted clients as saying that Mr. Kendall is “very analytical and experienced,” as well as one of the West Coast’s “strongest litigators.”

As a commercial litigator and an advisor on transactional matters, Mr. Kendall represents major entertainment studios, leading media companies, securities, banking and financial institutions, and foreign governments in complex, sensitive, and high-stakes disputes and negotiations. Current significant areas of his counsel include distribution rights battles, copyright, financing, and profit-participation disputes.

Mary Jo Shartsis is one of the founding partners of the firm Shartsis Friese LLP. She specializes in complex business litigation, including contract disputes, business torts, unfair competition, antitrust, corporate and partnership disputes, and banking and finance litigation. She has also represented employers in wrongful termination and discrimination cases. Her practice has included representation of financial institutions, manufacturing firms, partnerships, corporations and individuals. In 2003, she was named one of the Top 50 Women Litigators in California by the Los Angeles and San Francisco Daily Journal and has been named a Northern California Super Lawyer in business litigation each year since 2004. In addition to her litigation practice, Ms. Shartsis has served as a party-appointed arbitrator in complex commercial cases and has also served as an arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association in real estate, partnership and securities disputes. She has lectured on various alternative dispute resolution techniques to lawyers and judges in Egypt, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and India. A substantial portion of Ms. Shartsis’ practice has been in federal court. She is admitted to practice in the United States District Courts for the Northern, Eastern, and Central Districts of California as well as the United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit and the United States Supreme Court. She served as a Lawyer Representative to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference from 1994 to 1997. She is also a contributing author of Federal Pretrial Civil Procedure in California published by LexisNexis (Matthew Bender). Her state court practice has included litigation in San Francisco, Marin, Alameda, Santa Clara, San Mateo and Contra Costa County Superior Courts. Ms. Shartsis is a past member and past President in 2012 of the Board of Governors of the Northern California Chapter of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers. She is a member and past Chair (2008–2010) of the Board of Directors of The Legal Aid Society—Employment Law Center. She is past Chair of the San Francisco Bar Association Litigation Section Executive Committee and served two terms on the Judiciary Committee. In addition, she is a member of the American Bar Association Litigation Section and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. She has served on various panels on a variety of topics, including case management, arbitrator disclosure obligations and law practice issues. Ms. Shartsis received an A.B. degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969 and a J.D. from the University’s Boalt Hall School of Law in 1972, where she was a member of the California Law Rev