Catherine Meulemans helps her clients resolve commercial and business disputes. She has particular experience assisting financial institution clients faced with a variety of lawsuits, including contractual disputes; various claims related to lender liability, fiduciary duty, and fraud; and litigation involving financial instruments.

In addition to her banking practice, Catherine also works with various other corporate entities – franchises, public utilities, real estate companies, insurance companies, municipalities and governmental agencies, start-ups, Fortune 500 corporations, and more – to investigate and resolve multi-party commercial, contract and tort disputes, employment claims, partnership disputes, unfair competition and trade secret claims, and a broad range of real property claims, including foreclosure, receivership, quiet title, and mortgage fraud actions. She has litigated, tried and settled disputes in both state and federal courts.

A skilled courtroom advocate, Catherine understands the financial and strategic costs that lawsuits can inflict on all parties involved in a dispute. That’s why she helps her clients avoid litigation, when possible, by investigating potential claims before they become lawsuits, by providing training seminars as a preventive measure to avoid lawsuits, and by recommending early settlement of claims when that is in her clients’ best interest.

Catherine has been a mediator in the San Francisco Bar Association’s Early Settlement Program, where she helped people settle disputes outside of the courtroom. She is a member of the California Real Estate Women (CREW).

Litigation
Employment
Financial Institutions
Energy, Oil & Gas

• San Francisco Bar Association
• Mediator, San Francisco Bar Association, Early Settlement Program
• California Real Estate Women (CREW)

Her client representations include:

• Helping a major international banking client succeed at both trial and appeal in a lawsuit that ultimately allowed a bad faith waste “exception” to California’s anti-deficiency statutes, establishing new case law that was widely praised and embraced by the California banking community. See Nippon Credit Bank, Ltd. v. 1333 North California Boulevard et al. (2001) 86 Cal.App.4th 486.
• Conducting a high profile investigation in Las Vegas, involving numerous City departmental heads, the Mayor and the City Council members, on behalf of the Office of the Nevada Attorney General relating to the Las Vegas City Council’s decision to allow a developer with close ties to the Mayor to build residential housing on land adjacent to a sewage treatment facility. The highly public investigation culminated in the release of a comprehensive 165 page report that was widely praised in the Las Vegas press.
• Defending a publicly traded international gaming manufacturer in a federal employment litigation matter brought by a former associate general counsel turned whistle-blower who alleged that he was wrongfully terminated after revealing an alleged Sarbanes-Oxley violation.
• Managing the litigation portfolio for a $4 billion privately held international real estate brokerage franchise, including real estate and franchise disputes and vicarious liability actions brought before various courts within California. Worked with client to develop effective strategies for case resolution that enabled client to settle 100% of litigation in advance of trial.