Kathleen L. Dunham

Ms. Dunham is an experienced attorney with over 25 years in active practice in California. She received her B.A. Degree in English from U.C. Berkeley and her law degree from U.C.L.A.

In 2009, The Daily Journal named Ms. Dunham as one of the Top Women Litigators in the State of California.

Ms. Dunham was one of the lead attorneys in the ground-breaking class action case against the Orange County Register, involving approximately 5,000 newspaper carriers. Through discovery and law and motion efforts, Ms. Dunham successfully obtained numerous pre-trial orders against The Register’s parent company, Freedom Communications and its attorneys, including approximately $50,000 in sanctions. After two and half months of trial, the case settled for $42 million. According to a Daily Journal article, this case was the first certified class action on the issue of newspaper carriers’ rights to employee benefits, even though carriers have been fighting for those rights since the late 1980's.

Legal articles written by Ms. Dunham have appeared in publications such as Lawdragon ("Combating The Underground Economy," June, 2009), The National Law Journal ("Potentially Responsible Parties Can Avoid Some Pollution Exclusion Barriers," January, 1999) and the Orange County Business Journal ("Judging the Merits of Pursuing Litigation," September, 1995).

Human rights advocacy is of great interest to Ms. Dunham. She was a Court Appointed Special Advocate with the County of Orange in 2002-2004, for youths in the foster care system. In 2005, she worked for several months in the legal department of Casa Alianza in Guatemala City, Guatemala, where she prepared legal briefs and appeared at court hearings on human rights cases. Ms. Dunham has also provided volunteer legal services to The Human Rights Project and the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles.

Ms. Dunham is fluent in Spanish, certified by the California Department of Education. She has worked and lived overseas for more than four years, including years spent in Ecuador, Honduras and Korea.