LAS VEGAS – James J. Pisanelli and Todd L. Bice, founding partners of Pisanelli Bice PLLC, announced Michael R. Kalish has joined the firm as an associate attorney. Mr. Kalish primarily practices in complex commercial disputes, such as claims of breach of contract, fraud and misrepresentation, tortious interference and breach of fiduciary duties.
Prior to joining Pisanelli Bice, Mr. Kalish served as a judicial law clerk with the Eighth Judicial District Court of the State of Nevada. His experience also includes working as a legal intern at the University of San Diego Entrepreneurship Clinic and as a corporate counsel intern at One World Lab in San Diego, Calif.
A 2012 graduate of the University of San Diego School of Law, Mr. Kalish has received the CALI Excellence for the Future Award from The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction for international environmental law and for business planning.
Mr. Kalish received his undergraduate degree from the University of San Diego, graduating magna cum laude, in accounting in 2008.
North Las Vegas Councilman Wade Wagner won a legal judgment against the city Tuesday, collecting more than $70,000 in court-awarded legal fees to defray the cost of a three-year legal battle over his disputed 2011 election.
First-term Republican Wagner, who won his council seat by a single vote over incumbent Democrat Richard Cherchio, first took the city to court in June 2011, filing a lawsuit meant to block a planned special election aimed at settling Ward 4’s closely fought municipal race.
The city, faced with questions about a Ward 3 ballot mistakenly cast in Ward 4, had opted to hold a special election in lieu of recounting contested votes in Precinct 4306.
Wagner, who had already agreed to a recount, sued days later, arguing the city didn’t have the legal right to do anything more than canvass and recertify his narrow Election Day victory.
That lawsuit was upheld more than two years later by the Nevada Supreme Court, which found the councilman’s legal action “precluded the city from conducting an improper revote,” and saved city taxpayers the expense of holding a special election.
The December 2013 Supreme Court ruling reversed and remanded a District Court decision handed down by Judge Elizabeth Goff Gonzalez.
The Nevada Supreme Court should not permit a sore election loser such as Henderson’s Rick Workman to sandbag a duly elected official a year after the election, especially when he knew he could have brought a challenge earlier.
That’s the main thrust of a brief (posted below) filed by Henderson Mayor Andy Hafen’s attorney, Todd Bice, to a case in which Workman is seeking to remove Hafen from office, claiming he wasn’t eligible to be elected to his current term. The Nevada Supreme Court will consider the case, after Workman’s attorney, Stephanie Rice, has a chance to reply.
Rice is the lawyer who successfully argued the case of Lorton v. Jones, which held earlier this year that members of certain city councils — whether serving as a member of the council or serving as mayor — were limited to 12 years total, not up to 12 years as a council member and another 12 years as mayor. As a result, some term-limited members of Reno’s City Council were barred from running for mayor.
Workman later engaged Rice to challenge Hafen, who had reached his 12-year limit before running for and winning the Henderson mayoral primary last year. His action asks the Nevada Supreme Court to either allow him to challenge Hafen directly, in a proceeding known as quo warranto, or to force the attorney general to do so.
But Bice says Workman is out of luck, for several reasons.
The Henderson mayor’s attorney has been granted more time to defend the city official’s standing in office.
Mayor Andy Hafen now has until July 8 to respond to the Nevada Supreme Court’s request for more information in a term-limit case seeking his removal that was filed by a former candidate.
Hafen’s attorney, Todd L. Bice, requested and was granted the 10-day extension Friday because the attorney had “other matters that needed to be dealt with on a shorter time frame,” Bice said Monday.
The extension came the calendar day before Hafen, state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and Secretary of State Ross Miller were scheduled to respond to a late May filing. Former mayoral candidate Rick Workman filed the challenge May 21 after Cortez Masto and Miller declined to consider removing Hafen from office following a February state Supreme Court ruling on term limits.
Once Hafen, Cortez Masto and Miller file their joint response, Workman will have 15 days to answer their counter argument. The court then will decide if it should intervene in the case.
Hafen was first elected to the City Council in 1987 and was elected mayor in 2009. He was re-elected last year after receiving 55 percent of the vote in the primary.
Workman, a city employee since 2000 who works for the Police Department as its criminalistics administrator, received 37 percent of the vote.
LAS VEGAS – James J. Pisanelli and Todd L. Bice, founding partners of Pisanelli Bice PLLC, announced that seven lawyers from the firm have been recognized on the 2014 list of Mountain States Super Lawyers, a renowned ranking of outstanding attorneys across the region.
Pisanelli and Bice were both among the select attorneys honored on this year’s list of top 100 lawyers in the Mountain States Super Lawyers, along with Managing Partner Debra Spinelli and attorney Jarrod Rickard.
Spinelli was also recognized as a Top 50 female lawyer.
In addition to the aforementioned litigators, Pisanelli Bice attorneys Eric Aldrian, Christopher Miltenberger and Jordan Smith were each named in the Mountain States Super Lawyers “Rising Stars” category. Miltenberger, a senior associate, earned his fifth distinction as a rising star, while Aldrian and Smith were recognized as rising stars for the second consecutive year.
