Barbara A. Reeves Neal, Esq. has been a full-time neutral since 2006. Barbara is a well-known mediator and arbitrator, as well as a special master/referee. She uses her legal, analytical, and conciliation skills to craft the best possible resolution of each case. She has an exceptionally broad legal background that qualifies her in a wide range of subject areas. She is adept at handling large, complex cases, as well as disputes in which the parties have significant emotional involvement.
Barbara began her career as a government lawyer on the plaintiffs’ side of litigation, spending six years with the United States Department of Justice, Antitrust Division in Washington, D.C. and as chief of the Los Angeles field office. She then spent 18 years as partner in three nationally known law firms, handling a wide range of litigation, including employment, antitrust, securities, environmental coverage, intellectual property, class actions, and energy cases. She learned the “client perspective” of litigation as associate general counsel and vice president for Southern California Edison and Edison International for seven years, which included the California energy crisis.
In mediations, she serves as lawyer for the settlement. She works to organize settlement discussions in a way appropriate for the specific case, with its unique issues and personalities. She uses her years of experience, legal knowledge, and intuition to organize the settlement discussion toward analysis and evaluation in a manner most likely to achieve resolution. She is respected as an evaluative mediator, using her extensive legal knowledge to assist the parties in evaluating their cases and applying cost-benefit analysis to the options before them. She has the ability to communicate well with clients who have become emotionally involved with their positions and to guide them toward mutually acceptable resolutions.
In arbitration, Barbara is proactive and skilled, involving herself in the case from the beginning. She actively manages the prehearing processes, aggressively shaping the process, encouraging cooperation between the parties, tailoring and urging forward information exchange, and focusing on motions or other steps that hold real hope for resolving key elements of the case and moving the matter forward efficiently. Whenever possible, Barbara uses the prehearing process as a springboard to settlement, obviating the need for hearings. Where settlement is not possible, she will keep the focus on outcome-determinative issues so as to efficiently reach closure.
She has handled cases as a court appointed master, provisional director, and discovery referee in many areas of commercial law as well as civil rights cases.
Barbara’s practice focuses on commercial disputes, employment, and engineering & construction. In addition, she handles cases in the fields of energy, antitrust, insurance coverage, professional liability, and healthcare. She has also built upon her involvement in the equestrian world to develop a specialty in equestrian law.
Representative Matters
Matters handled by Ms. Reeves Neal include the following:
- Antitrust: Mediated matters involving class actions, price fixing, price discrimination, distribution arrangements, and joint ventures. Served as court-appointed master for discovery and settlement issues.
- Business/Commercial: Arbitrated and mediated matters in connection with breach of contract, mergers and acquisitions, fraud, corporate disclosure issues, franchising, accounting disputes, and partnership dissolution
- Class Action: Arbitrated and mediated class actions in the areas of consumer fraud, antitrust, health insurance, wage and hour, and employment discrimination. Served as a special master in employment and civil rights class actions.
- Construction and Engineering: Arbitrated construction disputes involving large residential developments, industrial plants and individual residences. Mediated disputes involving construction problems from beginning to completion of project. Mediated and served as referee in matters arising out of power plant construction.
- Employment: Arbitrated and mediated dozens of matters involving employee termination, discrimination, wage and hour disputes, sexual harassment, and Labor Code violations, including wage and hour class actions
- Entertainment: Arbitrated and mediated disputes between talent and agents, between talent and advertisers, and between production and distribution companies
- Energy: Practiced for many years handling litigation and regulatory matters for electric public utility, alternative energy provider and co-generators. Successfully mediated disputes in the energy industry involving public utility matters, natural gas pricing disputes, cogeneration construction disputes, oil and gas environmental issues, and construction contracts
- Equine Law: Successfully mediated disputes involving purchase/sale agreements and disputes involving show managers and exhibitors/vendors
- Insurance Coverage: Arbitrated and mediated environmental coverage disputes, director and officer coverage, healthcare coverage and professional liability coverage
- Healthcare: Arbitrated and mediated disputes between providers and insurers, physicians and medical centers, and policy holders and healthcare insurers
- Professional Liability: Arbitrated and mediated legal malpractice claims and medical malpractice claims
- Real Estate: Arbitrated and mediated construction defect disputes, real property purchase/sale agreements, and landlord-tenant disputes
- Special Master/Discovery Referee: Served as a court appointed discovery referee and special master in cases involving the dissolution of a corporation, division of assets in a partnership, contract disputes, employment discrimination, civil rights, and professional liability