Holly D. Brauchli

Practice Experience

Holly Brauchli is a civil litigator who defends clients in products liability, medical device, malpractice, and general liability cases. She is comfortable litigating in a variety of jurisdictional and procedural contexts including but not limited to civil and criminal arenas; federal, state, and tribal courts; and arbitration, trial, and class action forums. She is licensed and has practical experience in California, Washington, and Oregon.

After law school, Holly gained valuable first chair trial experience as a District Attorney for the City and County of San Francisco. Since successfully trying cases there, she has continued to advocate for her clients and gain their trust as a civil litigator. She enjoys learning about the case from the vantage of her clients and, through that process, developing creative solutions to cases. Some of her recent achievements include:

• Successful briefing achieving denial of class certification in a genetics privacy case with exposure of $92 million (affirmed by the Ninth Circuit);
• Successful briefing achieving partial summary judgment relating to the duty to indemnify and defend third-party pollution claims in Dolsen Companies v. Bedivere Ins. Co., 264 F. Supp. 3d 1083 (E.D. Wash. 2017);
• Pro Bono Amicus briefing which became central to the Washington Supreme Court's ruling in Rodriguez v. Zavala, 188 Wn.2d 586 (2017);
• Second-chaired a trial involving allegations of medical negligence which resulted in a directed verdict for the defense;
• Second-chaired a stipulated liability trial with exposure of $5 million and obtained a verdict of less than $90,000;
• Successful summary judgment briefing securing a dismissal due to a lack of proximate causation in a case involving alleged design defects of a pallet truck, Beard v. Mighty Lift, Inc., 224 F. Supp. 3d 1131, 1132 (W.D. Wash. 2016);
• Successful licensure defense of a veterinary clinic who faced serious accusations launched by a disgruntled former practitioner; and
• Successful summary judgment briefing which secured the dismissal of several constitutional claims asserted against a municipality for damages relating to a wildfire.