Don Schaefer Email & Phone Number

I am an attorney with 33 years litigation experience, primarily handling products liability, personal injury, and construction defect cases. In a nutshell, I’ve spent the vast majority of my legal career putting out fires and mitigating damages on my clients’ behalf. In February, 2022, I became senior counsel with Goodman Neuman Hamilton, LLP.While with Bennett, Samuelsen, Reynolds & Allard (1991-98), I obtained scores of dismissals for unjustly named defendants, including a summary judgment motion (later upheld by the First Appellate District) in a multi-million dollar asbestos tort claim which became the cornerstone for no less than 40 other such dismissals. Later, as an independent contractor, I second-chaired the Chavers v Gatke Corporation trial, which case, following appeal, ultimately resulted in permanently eliminating tenuous “market share liability” and “conspiracy” claims against automotive component parts manufacturers. For my part, I personally pored over 22,000 pages of "conspiracy" documents; deposed plaintiff's primary expert for two full days; and then cross-examined him later that evening.For 19 years between 1999-2018, I worked as an independent contractor for approximately two dozen bay area law firms defending an estimated 700 products liability, toxic tort, and construction defect claims. Before law school I worked as an auto technician performing auto-mechanical, collision, and classic car restoration work. When I discovered my colleagues knew little about their auto-mechanical clients, in 2003 I created Auto 101 for Lawyers, a hands-on, State Bar approved, 9.25-unit CLE course geared toward (no pun intended) those attorneys defending automotive products liability cases. In addition to Auto 101 for Lawyers, I have taught Real Estate Law, Legal Research and Writing, Contracts Writing and Introduction to the Law.As a former auto mechanic, I have the utmost admiration and respect for those who work with their hands and thus thoroughly enjoy defending them against spurious claims.

Listed skills include Legal Research, Depositions, Trials, Civil Litigation, and 20 others.