Judge Jack Komar (Ret.) has extensive experience settling and managing complex cases acquired during more than 24 years of service on the Santa Clara County Superior Court bench. In 2000, as the first Presiding Judge of the unified Superior Court, Judge Komar initiated a voluntary mediation program which is still employed today. The focus of this early settlement program, which is available for all unlimited civil cases upon stipulation of the parties, is to settle cases before large sums are expended on discovery and law and motion.
As the sole Complex Litigation Judge from 2001-2009, Judge Komar has heard and decided complex issues of fact and law in numerous challenging cases. He is highly regarded by counsel for his objectivity, fairness, and efficiency in managing multi-party complex litigation.
ADR Experience and Qualifications
Substantive matters, presided over as the sole Complex Litigation Judge in Santa Clara County since 2001, include:
- Business/Commercial:
- Breaches of automobile repossession requirements by national finance businesses
- Breaches of fiduciary obligations
- Trade secret cases
- Unfair business and unfair competition matters
- Class Actions: Employment and product defect cases
- Construction Defect: Mass construction defect cases
- Employment: Wage-and-hour issues, discrimination cases, and wrongful termination
- Environmental: Ground water rights cases involving thousands of acres and multiple parties
- Insurance Coverage: Disputes between carriers and policy holders; disputes between insurance companies
- Mass Torts: Mass product defect cases and mass toxic torts
- Personal Injury: Wrongful death and serious injury cases involving numerous parties
- Railroad Accidents
- Securities: Shareholder class actions and shareholder derivative actions
Representative Matters
- Construction
- Multiple cases involving large single family home, apartment, and condominium developments involving law suits by HOA’s, or individual plaintiffs joining together in a single complaint, against developers with cross-complaints against general contractors and further cross-complaints against sub-contractors who also cross-complained. Major issues included discovery, indemnification, contribution, and duty to defend.
- Corporate Derivative Litigation
- Multiple cases over many years involving lawsuits brought by shareholders seeking to enforce corporate causes of action against officers and directors of corporations and others, claiming mismanagement, insider trading, waste of corporate assets, excessive compensation, self-dealing, improper sale of the corporation, back dating of stock options, and false proxy and other required statements. Most of the law suits involved publicly traded corporations, with California corporate headquarters and either California or Delaware incorporations.
- Employment Class Actions
- Class action cases involving a myriad of causes of action, including actions alleging that employer reimbursement of advanced commissions were unlawful; actions involving tip sharing mandates by employers and proper allocations of tips; actions alleging that certain Labor Code provisions created private causes of action; actions alleging that sabbatical policies create a vested right when an employee terminates before meeting the time in service requirements; actions contending that a sabbatical was actually a disguised vacation structure; actions claiming that employees are entitled to compensation for time spent changing into uniforms; actions challenging exempt status of some managers and assistant managers in connection with lunch, rest break, and overtime requirements; actions challenging certain engineers were exempt from wage-and-hour protections based on either the professional or the administrative exemption; and actions challenging whether technical writers are exempt employees, inter alia.
- Medical/Health Torts
- Claims of improper needle re-use resulting in possible infection among a large number of patients, all of whom claimed emotional distress and one of whom claimed she became HIV positive.
- Central Valley case with issues of claimed health problems resulting from a fire which allegedly caused both specific and general health problem in an entire county, which joined all claimants as individual plaintiffs.
- Product Defects
- Class actions involving product defects, misrepresentations of characteristics of products and false claims in mass advertisements involving automobiles, computer software and hardware.
- Actions involving medical device and equipment defects: misrepresentation of success rates, concealment and failure to disclose deficiencies, with claimed death and injuries. The cases involved multiple plaintiffs each suing individually on similar claims. The issues included FDA approvals, fraud allegations, concealment and misrepresentation, and claims of preemption by acts of Congress.
- Real Property Development
- Rights and duties connected to CC&Rs of large real property developments, including issues related to rights of developers to impose assessments, modify CC&Rs for subsequent development in same area, and rights of indemnity when HOA is joined in the suit.
- Trade Secrets
- Various cases with issues involving claimed trade secret thefts and causes of action resulting from breaches of fiduciary obligations in development agreements, joint ventures, partnerships, and employment relationships. Other issues involved director responsibility for disclosure and nondisclosure of confidential information when sitting on the board of both corporations involved in a development agreement.
- Water Rights Litigation
- Adjudicated ground water rights in aquifers in California. The cases involved thousands of acres of land and thousands of land owners, along with public and private water companies who produce water for residential and commercial use, large farmers and ranch owners, and municipalities, water districts, and counties, as well as the federal government. The issues included pleading issues, jurisdictional issues, overdraft, safe yield, prescription, reasonable and beneficial use of water, and quiet title.
- Miscellaneous Cases
- Actions against banks, title companies, and escrow holders seeking recovery for damages resulting from fraudulent activities of a mortgage broker who perpetrated a Ponzi scheme on unwitting individual lenders.
- Actions by individual homeowners joining together in suit against cities and counties and a major golf course operator seeking major damages for a flood which damaged their property.
- Class action seeking damages against a corporation based upon improper transfer to state under escheatment statute.
- Defamation action against former employees by former managers of a national corporation and the corporation itself.
- Multiple unfair competition causes of actions brought in connection with almost all of the above categories of cases.
- Various insurance policy interpretation cases, often arising out of construction defect law suits.