Paul Rein has been litigating access cases on behalf of physically disabled persons for the past 37 years of his 43 years as an attorney. (To our knowledge, longer than any other attorney in the United States.) He prepared for the turmoil of litigation by winning the Intercollegiate middleweight boxing championship in 1965 and has been working to assist the Cal Boxing Team ever since.

Education: Phi Beta Kappa undergraduate degree, University of California, Berkeley, 1965; J.D. Boalt Hall, University of California, Berkeley, 1968. Represented Boalt Hall in 1968 California State Moot Court Championships, team winning the Oral Advocacy portion of the competition. Admitted to California Bar and all Federal Courts, January 9, 1969. Trial counsel and appellate co-counsel in the three leading California appellate cases upholding use of private lawsuits for public interest injunctive relief to remove architectural barriers and recover damages for physically disabled persons: James Donald v. Sacramento Valley Bank (1989) 209 Cal.App.3d 1183 (3rd District Court of Appeal), James Donald v. Cafe Royale (1990) 218 Cal.App.3d 168, 266 Cal.Rptr. 804 (1st DCA), and Mark Hankins v. El Torito Restaurants, Inc., et al. (1998) 63 Cal.App.4th 510 (1st DCA).

In Mark Hankins v. El Torito Restaurants, we recovered substantial damages and attorney fees for discrimination against a disabled person who was denied use of both public and "employees" restrooms, and set important California law legal precedent when the published appellate opinion affirmed the trial court judgement. (63 Cal.App.4th 510)

Important precedents were also set by our cases in two published opinions by Northern District Chief Judge Thelton Henderson in Bernard Walker and Christina Adams v. Carnival Cruise Lines, et al., (1999) 63 F.Supp.2d 1083 and (2000) 107 F.Supp.2d 1135, extending ADA coverage to the services of travel agents booking accommodations for disabled persons who request “accessible facilities,” and holding that ADA Title III protected persons physically unable to travel to Miami from being required to bring their ADA actions in Florida, despite the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shute v. Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc. (1991) 499 U.S. 585. Settlement (in conjunction with a Florida class action handled by Matthew Dietz, Esq., of Miami) resulted in making accessible all 15 Carnival Cruise Lines ships operated in American waters, and involving the largest cruise line in the world.

In the second Carnival Cruise Lines opinion ((2000) 107 F.Supp.2d 1135, at 1143), the Court encouraged private lawsuits to enforce the ADA and obtain "private attorney general" attorney's fees:

There can be no question that the Americans With Disabilities Act, passed in 1990, established as law the nation's interest in eradicating the bigotry and barriers faced by individuals with disabilities...The ADA creates the possibility that successful plaintiffs may establish permanent changes in the design and physical configuration of structures to better accommodate the disabled. 42 U.S.C. 12101(a)(5). The benefits of such changes clearly redound not only to the plaintiffs themselves, but to similarly situated disabled persons, and the entire society at large. As a result, plaintiffs or plaintiff classes who bring suit pursuant to the ADA do so in the role of "private attorneys general" who seek to vindicate "a policy of the highest priority."

For example, successful ADA plaintiffs confer a tremendous benefit upon our society at large, in addition to the attainment of redress for their personal individual injuries...[T]he enforcement of civil rights statutes by plaintiffs as private attorneys general is an important part of the underlying policy behind the law. Such a policy ensures an incentive for “impecunious” plaintiffs who can ill afford to litigate their claims against defendants with more resources..."

Celia McGuinness has more than 20 years experience as a trial lawyer and appellate attorney. She was a San Francisco Deputy Public Defender for 8 years, before entering private practice as a criminal defense attorney. She has prepared and/or tried a broad variety of cases in both state and federal court, including complex homicide cases. She has argued before the California Court of Appeals and the Ninth Circuit.

In addition to her courtroom work, Ms. McGuinness has substantial academic credentials. She has been a Visiting Clinical Professor at the University of San Francisco Law School, and taught "Legal Writing and Research," and "Moot Court," at Hastings College of Law. She has published scholarly works in the Hastings Women's Law Journal and in Interpretation, a journal of political philosophy. She has also published articles in California Lawyer Magazine and the Daily Recorder newspaper.

Ms. McGuinness is a graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, MN, where she won the 1986 Congden Contest for Essays on Nietzsche's Thought. Between college and law school, Ms. McGuinness was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study the public defender system in Australia. During that experience she co-authored a "Report on Deaths in Custody of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders" for the Minnesota Lawyers International Human Rights Committee, a paper that was presented to the United Nations Subcommittee on Indigenous Peoples on August 5, 1988. She is a 1991 graduate of U.C. Hastings College of the Law, where she won the 1991 California State Moot Court Competition and was named Best Oral Advocate.

Ms. McGuinness understands the daily hurdles that people with disabilities face. A member of her immediate family uses a wheelchair, as well as assistive technology to communicate. This insight strengthens her determination to produce the excellent outcomes her clients deserve, while ensuring permanent changes which will improve access for all disabled people. Her dedication to protecting the rights of disabled persons led her to join the Rein Law Office in 2008, so that she could work full time toward ending discrimination against the disabled in public facilities operated by governmental or commercial entities.

Catherine "Cat" Cabalo has eleven years experience as a civil litigator, representing both plaintiffs and defendants in multiple areas of practice, including civil rights, labor and employment, construction defects, property rights, real estate, personal/catastrophic injury, premises liability, and product liability. She has handled a variety of cases in both Washington state and Federal courts up through trial and appeal, including the Washington State Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In her practice, she has handled several multi-million dollar personal injury, premises liability, product liability, and construction defect cases. She was named a Rising Star in 2009 by Washington Law and Politics Magazine.

Ms. Cabalo is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington. She is a 2001 graduate of the University of Washington School of Law and was named a member of the Order of Barristers upon graduation for her Moot Court oral advocacy skills. She is co-founder of the Charles Z. Smith Public Interest Award at the University of Washington School of Law. Upon graduating from law school, Ms. Cabalo clerked for Justice Mario R. Ramil of the Hawaii Supreme Court.

Aaron Clefton, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from the University of Washington, has eight years experience as a paralegal in the field of civil rights and disability law, and has worked with our firm for seven years. His unique experience has been recognized by several courts in setting his hourly fee rate in contested litigation. In her fee order in Blackwell v. Foley, 724 F.Supp.2d 1068 (N.D.Cal. 2010), at 1082, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel noted,

his Phi Beta Kappa undergraduate from the University of Washington in 2004, his unusual and extensive public interest work in Seattle and South Africa, his interrupted law school education; and his extensive duties for more than five years as a senior paralegal and law clerk in the Rein disability rights office.

Aaron has also been assisting Paul Rein in completing his long-planned, comprehensive book, "Disabled Access Litigation."