Julia Sherwin

Julia Sherwin is a nationally prominent civil rights trial lawyer and partner at Haddad & Sherwin LLP, https://haddadandsherwin.com/julia-sherwin, in Oakland, California.  She has successfully tried and settled numerous high profile, cutting-edge cases in federal and state courts.  She began her career in Detroit, Michigan, at the nation's first racially integrated law firm.  Julia represents clients throughout Northern and Central California, from the Oregon border to Fresno.

Some examples of Julia's cases include:

•  The largest civil rights wrongful death settlement in California history at the time ($8.3 million) for the beating and restraint asphyxia (a/k/a positional asphyxia) death of a jail inmate who was suffering from severe alcohol withdrawal, plus first-in-the-nation reforms requiring not only Alameda County but also its for-profit jail medical contractor to provide Registered Nurses or higher level caregivers for all patient assessments throughout the State of California;

•  $11.5 million for a jail inmate rendered quadriplegic by deliberately indifferent healthcare providers working for a for-profit corporation contracted to care for county jail inmates;

•  $7.3 million settlement for the children of a man who was severely beaten, choked, and stomped by police then forced into a prone position with weight on his back, similar to George Floyd, until he died;

•  $6.7 million catastrophic injury settlement for a Mom who was permanently disabled by police who broke into her home and smashed her ankle after she insisted that they get a warrant before entering her home to arrest her teenage daughter;

•  $5.85 million after winning a trial, for victims of the Oakland Police Department's unconstitutional policy allowing officers to strip search people in public; 

•  $5.5 million for a man who was brutalized and had both of his hands crushed by deputies as he surrendered to them;

•  $5.1 million for a mentally ill man who had been declared incompetent to stand trial and was beaten to death by another severely mentally ill man, while he waited for Napa State Hospital and the California Department of State Hospitals to comply with a court order committing him to their custody and requiring them to admit him for inpatient psychiatric treatment.

•  $5 million for the death of 3-year-old Kayleigh Slusher, along with sweeping reforms to the Napa Police Department's child abuse and neglect policies and training, which will save children's lives in the future;

•  $5 million for the jail beating and restraint asphyxiation death of a schizophrenic man in psychiatric crisis, plus a new county-wide Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training program for deputies to safely handle contacts with mentally ill people, mandatory police use of body-worn video cameras in all contacts with the public, as well as new policies and training on the dangers of prone restraint and to prevent restraint asphyxia or compression asphyxia;

•  $4.35 million present value in 2005, for the failure to diagnose a cardiac condition in a 9-year-old boy;

•  a case obtaining the State of California's first mandatory training program and curriculum in public schools to combat homophobia and sexual orientation discrimination, followed by over $1 million after winning trial for a high school teacher who was disciplined and threatened with termination for protecting LGBT students from harassment;

•  the first case nationally to recognize the First Amendment rights of Administrative Law Judges to make decisions free of outside pressure.

Julia is the former longtime Vice-President and Board Member for the National Police Accountability Project (NPAP), and a former Lawyer Representative to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and Northern District of California Judicial Conferences.  As a Lawyer Representative, she organized the "Civil in Name Only" CLE at the 2013 Northern District of California Judicial Conference and provided model professionalism guidelines for consideration by the Court, which resulted in the Court adopting its Guidelines for Professional Conduct (http://www.cand.uscourts.gov/professional_conduct_guidelines). She is a member and Past Board Member (2007) of the Consumer Attorneys of California, a member of the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association (SFTLA), and Past President (2007) and a former longtime Board member of the Alameda Contra Costa Trial Lawyers Association (ACCTLA). She also served as a Board member for the Detroit chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and as a Barrister with the American Inns of Court.  Julia is a Councilor with Save the Redwoods League, https://www.savetheredwoods.org/. She is the founder of Walls of Justice, https://www.wallsofjustice.com/, an online community forum and gallery dedicated to honoring artists demanding police and social justice reform in the wake of George Floyd's murder by Minneapolis Police Officers.

Julia is admitted to practice in both California and Michigan.

Julia has long been Rated AV Preeminent* by the prestigious peer-review service Martindale-Hubbell.

*AV-Preeminent and BV-Distinguished are certification marks of Reed Elsevier Properties Inc., used in accordance with the Martindale-Hubbell certification procedures, standards and policies. Martindale-Hubbell is the facilitator of a peer review rating process. Ratings reflect the confidential opinions of members of the Bar and the judiciary. Martindale-Hubbell ratings fall into two categories – legal ability and general ethical standards.