Appellate advocacy is Nadia’s passion. With an intimate understanding of the appellate litigation landscape, Nadia’s advocacy work starts pretrial, where she consults with trial counsel to formulate trial strategies and ways to best protect their trial court victories. Nadia has built a robust appellate practice representing clients in the state appellate courts, the federal circuit courts of appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Busch v. McGinnis Waste Systems Inc., 366 Or. 628 (2020).
Busch was a personal injury case in which the Oregon Supreme Court struck down Oregon’s $500,000 cap on noneconomic damages in personal injury cases. Scott Busch was struck by a truck in downtown Portland and suffered severe and life-changing injuries. The jury awarded him $10.5 million in noneconomic damages, but the trial court capped the award at $500,000, pursuant to the statutory cap. Nadia, appearing as amicus curiae on behalf of the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association, helped trial and appellate counsel John Coletti and Gene Hallman obtain a groundbreaking victory for injured Oregonians by arguing that the statutory cap violates the Oregon Constitution’s remedy clause in all cases.
Christian v. Umpqua Bank, 984 F.3d 801 (9th Cir. 2020)
Christian is another case in which Nadia helped secure a tremendous appellate victory, including a complete reversal of summary judgment and an important, precedential decision from the Ninth Circuit addressing hostile work environment and discrimination claims under state and federal law.
Barbosa v. Barr, 926 F.3d 1053 (9th Cir. 2019)
In this appeal, Nadia appeared pro bono to assist with a petition for review from the Board of Immigration Appeals. The Board had found the petitioner, a longtime Oregonian, ineligible for relief from removal. This case resulted in a published opinion from the Ninth Circuit concluding that third-degree robbery under Oregon law is not categorically a crime involving moral turpitude.
Bohr v. Tillamook County Creamery Association, 19CV36208 (Mult. Cnty. Cir. Ct.)
For years, Tillamook Creamery marketed its artisan cheeses as products of the small family farms of Tillamook County. The images, ads, and marketing materials highlighted dairy cows on verdant pastures under the blue skies of the Tillamook Valley.
In truth, two-thirds of Tillamook’s milk comes from a mega-dairy, where cows are kept 24/7 in crowded, unsanitary conditions. Sugerman Dahab, alongside Animal Legal Defense Fund, represents consumers who challenge Tillamook Creamery’s misrepresentations as a violation of Oregon’s Unlawful Trade Practices Act. The case is currently pending in the Oregon Supreme Court.
DeFries v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., No. 23-35119 (9th Cir. 2024)
In this case, Nadia represented Public Justice, which appeared as amicus curiae in a class action filed against Union Pacific by employees and former employees who allege that UP violated the ADA when it adopted a new disability screening policy that resulted in the plaintiffs being removed from their jobs, though they had been successfully and safely doing their jobs for years, sometimes decades. Counsel for the class has proposed a slightly different class definition than the one in the complaint at class certification, and the district court certified the class under the revised definition. The Eighth Circuit later decertified the class on appeal.
Several prior class members then promptly brought individual ADA lawsuits against UP around the country. Districts courts threw out those cases as untimely, however, adopting UP’s argument that American Pipe tolling ceased when counsel for the class proposed a different definition, and not when the Eighth Circuit decertified the class. According to UP, the new definition did not include the plaintiffs in the individual lawsuits, even though many of them were on lists of employees everyone understood to be lists of class members at the time. On appeal a district court order in Oregon, the Ninth Circuit ruled that class members were entitled to American Pipe tolling until the Eighth Circuit decertified the class, making their individual suits timely.