An accountable attorney

Senior attorney Shehnaz Maneck Bhujwala was elected to the board of governors of the Consumer Attorneys of California (CAOC) for the years 2011and 2012. The 37-year-old’s practice area includes products liability, consumer law, toxic torts and complex litigation. A professional organization made up of nearly 3,000 attorneys who represent plaintiffs seeking accountability from those who do wrong, CAOC’s "attorneys and their clients face opponents with far more power and access to resources: big polluters, insurance companies, automobile manufacturers and banks. CAOC members take only those cases they view as worthy, invest their own resources in pushing those cases to court and are paid under the contingency fee system only if their clients achieve a successful result,” mentions the CAOC website.

Shehnaz Bhujwala: faith in fairness

The aggrieved individuals or causes CAOC represents are: those injured or killed by defective products or drugs; people who suffer discrimination because of age, gender, disability or race; individuals injured or killed because of another’s negligent acts; citizens whose civil rights have been violated; workers who have been fired unjustly or injured on the job; investors and others wronged by financial institutions; those whose lives are undercut when insurance companies act in bad faith; patients who have negligently been harmed instead of healed by the health care industry.

A senior associate at the Beverly Hills law firm Kiesel, Boucher Larson (KBL), LLP (Limited Liability Partnership), Bhujwala is presently a member of the firm’s privacy rights litigation team. She is a co-lead, class counsel, in an action against Pacific Bell Telephone Company for its participation in the wiretapping conspiracy orchestrated by former Hollywood private investigator Anthony Pellicano. She has helped "bring about successful settlements and verdicts on numerous, high profile cases,” notes the law firm’s website, listing her accomplishments as "a $ 58 million jury verdict for a construction worker who suffered severe burn injuries from a defective O-ring; settlement with a major television network on behalf of a news reporter who was severely burned when her mobile transmission truck struck overhead power lines; the historic settlements with the Los Angeles and San Diego Archdioceses on behalf of hundreds of clergy sex abuse survivors; and settlement with the Writers Guild of America on behalf of a class of writers to ensure payment of foreign levy funds due and owing to them.”

"My work today directly results from the values that my parents and the Zoroastrian faith have instilled in me. Representing consumers who have been harmed by big corporations and insurance companies is an honor. It is my small way of trying to bring about truth, fairness and justice in our world,” the attorney conveyed to Parsiana.

Bhujwala completes a decade with the California State Bar having been admitted after her graduation from the University of Southern California Law School. Before studying law she graduated in arts from the University of California, Los Angeles with high honors for her research in the intersecting fields of cognitive psychology and the law. Prior to joining KBL she gained experience at Greene, Broillet, Panish and Wheeler, a plaintiffs’ litigation firm where she "discovered a passion for effecting positive changes for consumers and holding corporate wrongdoers accountable for their misdeeds.”

She also enjoys membership on other prestigious legal associations like the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Bar Association and Trial Lawyers for Public Justice.