Martin Zurada Partner

Martin Zurada's Results

$4.8 Million

Settled for $4,800,000

Our client was a hard-working father who lost his livelihood in an instant when he suffered a major injury and amputation to his leg. We uncovered evidence of the Defendant’s failure to follow basic safety rules. Along with our team of highly qualified experts, we thoroughly explained every aspect of how our client, his wife, and his kids’ lives were changed forever by this tragedy.

$3 Million

Settlement: $3 Million | Class Action Settlement.

Truck Drivers v. Agricultural Company. $3,000,000 class action settlement agreement that included payments to truck drivers and forgiveness of their debt. Our firm was lead co-counsel in a class action and PAGA claim for truck drivers of an agricultural company engaging in wage theft. The drivers did not receive pay as they waited substantial amounts of time to load and unload their trucks. Truck drivers who left the company were unlawfully charged for training expenses to discourage them from leaving. The settlement resulted in hundreds of hard-working truck drivers being better compensated for their work going back over five years, and forgiveness of the unlawful training charges.

$3 Million

Construction Site Injury

Jury verdict in excess of $3,000,000

Our client an experienced electrician sustained a severe wrist injury at a construction site when he fell and tripped over some formboards with rebar inside of them. After a long fight, our client received compensation for his substantial lost wages and pain and suffering. This case was factually complex, and the Venardi Zurada team fought hard to uncover a smoking gun document that pointed the finger at the Defendant general contractor. By the end of trial, jurors did not believe the defendant, whose witnesses repeatedly lied on the stand. The jury found that the general contractor in charge of the construction site failed to provide our client safe and convenient access to toilets and that our client was forced into choosing between two poor toilet paths.

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Profile
Credentials

Bio

“When I see that my client has been wronged, I fight and give it everything I have because justice matters.”

Martin was born in 1974 in Gdynia, Poland. The economic conditions were generally bleak under communist rule and became bleaker in 1981 as the military instituted martial law to crush dissenters. In 1983, when Martin was 9 years old, he and his parents moved to a small desert town in Libya where his father taught at a university and his mother worked as an engineer in a factory to earn dollars and make ends meet. In 1986, after three surreal years of living in a country ruled by Muammar Gaddafi, Martin and his parents immigrated to Germany where Martin attended middle school without knowing any German.

Martin and his parents then immigrated to the US in 1987. However, to keep Martin on his toes, his parents decided that he would skip several grades at his Louisville Kentucky middle school while still learning English. Martin then attended a wealthy private high school on a scholarship driving a beat-up Ford that stood out among other students’ BMWs and Volvos. Starting in 1991, Martin began attending the intensely academic University of Chicago (where one of its presidents is credited with saying “When I get the urge to exercise, I lay down until it goes away”), earning a scholarship along the way, and graduating in 1994 with a BA in English literature and Polish literature in a little over three years.

Martin then attended Cornell University Law School graduating with a J.D. and LLM in in 1998. He earned a scholarship and attended a summer program at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Martin clerked for the Kentucky Supreme Court and two law firms during law school.

During his more than twenty five years as a lawyer, Martin tried, arbitrated, and mediated many cases often successfully taking on very challenging cases that other attorneys had given up on.

Martin has always felt like the underdog and that is why he strongly prefers to represent the “little guys” and taking the fight to the large corporations and insurance companies. He started his legal career in 1998, at the age of 24, as an associate at Squire Sanders – now one of the ten largest firms in the world – where he practiced corporate law and litigation before moving to California to work in smaller firms and eventually starting his own practice.

By the time he was 28, Martin had tried three cases to judgment, one of which resulted in a defense judgment for his client, and the other two with his clients collecting over $400,000 in damages. Not long after that, he obtained his first $1 million dollars result in a personal injury case in which he was the lead trial attorney. During his more than twenty-five years as a lawyer, Martin tried, arbitrated, and mediated many cases often successfully taking on very challenging matters that other attorneys had given up on. He has tried bench and jury case several of which resulted in his clients recovering millions of dollars (with a recent recovery after jury trial of over $3 million).

Some of the most satisfying moments in my life have come at the end of trials where our firm has righted a wrong for a client by speaking his or her voice.

Martin is a student of advocacy, a former trial skills instructor, and intensely interested in honing his trial skills. He was admitted in Ohio in 1998 and California in 2001. Martin has taught various legal subjects at San Francisco State University and the Academy of Law and Diplomacy in Gdynia, Poland. He also has a five-star AV rating from Martindale-Hubbell.

When he isn’t working away at the office, Martin enjoys running in the woods with his dog, skiing, reading history books and, most of all, being a Soccer dad for his daughter Isabella.

Areas of Practice

Auto Accidents
Motorcycle Accidents
Trucking Accidents
Personal Injury
Wrongful Death
Biking Accidents
Premises Liability/Slip and Fall
Product Liability
Dog Bites/Attacks
Employment Law
Harassment
Discrimination
Whistleblower Protection Cases
Retaliation
Wage and Hour
Severance Agreements
Employment Agreements
Executive Compensation
Insurance Bad Faith
Select Commercial and Intellectual Property Disputes on Contingency Fee

Honors and Awards

“AV” rating from Martindale-Hubbell, 2022-2024
2024 Attorney of the Year by Top 100 Lawyers Magazine
2023 California Top 100 Verdicts
National Trial Lawyers Top 100, 2020-2021

Bar Admissions

California, 2001
Ohio, 1998
All State Courts within California
U.S. District Court Northern District of California
U.S. District Court Eastern District of California

Education

Cornell Law School
- J.D./LL.M., 1998
- Honors: Top Third of Class, Kosciuszko Scholarship
University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
- Dual B.A. in English Literature and Polish Literature – 1994
- Honors: Dean’s List and Human Scholarship