Hurst represented Dish in litigation
against the four major broadcast networks,
which contended Dish’s ad-skipping DVR
infringed their copyrighted programming.
Hurst says the case was the easiest she’d
ever had to explain to laypeople: She was
defending their right to watch television
without commercials.
In July 2013, the 9th Circuit sided with
Dish and the lower district court in rejecting
demands for a preliminary injunction in
Dish’s battle with Fox Broadcasting Co.
“She convinced the judge, and rightfully
so, the other side was misreading the law,”
Katzin says. “We had some novel issues of
laws that pushed up against the boundaries
of copyright. Some judge had to be first, and
Annette was instrumental in convincing the
judge to go our way on the issue.”
In January 2015, a district court judge
rejected the parts of Fox’s suit against Dish
involving copyright claims; the remainder
of the case on contract issues was on hold
until October, according to press reports.
Dish settled its cases with CBS and The
Walt Disney Co., owner of ABC, in 2014,
and the lawsuit with NBC is ongoing.
Katzin recalls talking to Hurst about a
technology issue and receiving an email
from her much later. “The email said, ‘I’ve
been thinking about this for two months,
reading some cases, and have an idea,’“ he
remembers. “The [gears] keep spinning.
She’s part of the team and part of our
family, looking out for our interests.”
DURING THE DISH CASE, HURST SERVED
as president of her children’s PTA. “My kids
go to public school, which is not the first
choice for most partners in a big law firm,”
she says. “But I believe in public school as
the cornerstone of democracy.”
She approached the PTA in the same
way she practices law. “People really
responded to the framing that we are a
community because we care about each
other’s kids and are willing to help each
other so our kids succeed,” she says.
Becoming a mother was the reason
Hurst left Howard Rice in 2005 after 15
years with the firm. “A very good mentor
told me, ‘You have kids now, and you have
to think if the bench is deep enough to
balance work and family,’“ Hurst recalls.
“I started thinking about that and worried
that I needed to be at a bigger firm to
be a successful rainmaker and mom of
twins. Howard Rice was a great firm with
incredibly smart people, but I needed a
place where they had more people to pick
up the slack when I needed slack.”
She doesn’t like the words “work-life
balance,” preferring “work-life integration.”
As she puts it, “I’m still a lawyer when I’m
at home. It’s not like I leave that behind
and it’s not part of who I am. And it’s the
same thing at work; I don’t leave behind
the fact that I’m a parent.”
Hurst represents technology companies
at work, and spends a good chunk of her
free time playing video games with her
kids. “I’m a gamer mom,” she says. “I’m a
sci-fi and fantasy fan and like the storylines
of video games—it’s another storytelling
form of art.”
She also likes the strategic thinking in
games. After her son spent a 45-minute
drive extolling the wonders of an iPad
game called Terraria, Hurst purchased
it, then she and her children devised a
strategy to beat the game’s final boss,
called “The Wall of Flesh.”
“We developed a whole elaborate
plan to work together,” she says. “It’s an
opportunity to use the strategic thinking I
like without the high stakes of a trial.”
GWIRE/GOODMAN CONTINUED FROM PAGE 27
events Gwire credits with shaping his
career. A former client called to say
he had a problem: He was dissolving a
business partnership and going broke
in the process. “He said, ‘I’m going to
survive breaking up with my [business]
partner, but I’m not going to survive my
lawyers,’” recalls Gwire.
The client was spending $40,000
to $50,000 a month on lawyers’ fees,
Gwire says. “It was clear to me that they
were overcharging him,” he says, his
voice rising. “No one had even begun to
discuss settlement. That offended me.”
Gwire told his client’s lawyers to put
the case into mediation. When the dust
cleared, he says, the case settled and
his client won back about $250,000 in
fees. “He thought I walked on water,”
Gwire recalls. “He started spreading the
word in his professional world, and a few
more cases came in to me. That’s when I
thought, maybe there’s a niche here that
needs to be filled.”
It was a niche that fit him well.
“I had skin in the game and wanted
to improve [the] profession,” he says.
“This was what I was looking for when I
got into law school. I am a child of the
’60s, absolutely. Those years were really
important years socially. People were
involved and interested, and there were
strong senses of right and wrong. I grew up
in that era, and being on the side of right is
really important to me. I want to wear the
white hat.”
He’s currently handling a case in which
a client trying to win an appeal for a jailed
son gave her life savings—$25,000—to a
lawyer who Gwire says neglected to tell
her that the period for filing an appeal
had expired.
Then there was the cancer patient who
hired a lawyer to appeal a disability claim,
only to find herself paying that lawyer “tens
of thousands of dollars” in fees for what
seemed to Gwire to be far less work than
the number of hours billed.
“We wrote to the lawyer and said we
don’t want money back, just [a] release
from future payments. He said no, so we
sued him. He had a viable legal claim that
his agreement was enforceable; we were
actually appealing to the morality of the
situation.”
After a three-day trial, the judge agreed,
declaring the original fee agreement
unenforceable. Ultimately, Gwire says, his
client recouped all her fees, even after her
former attorney appealed. As for Gwire,
it was a pro bono case, so he took no fee.
There was a cake involved, however—baked
by the grateful client.
As for Goodman, one thing that’s not
part of her job, she says, is to judge. “It’s
my job to defend them and get the matter
resolved, hopefully quickly and without any
long-term impact on them.”
