Once more, the Daily Journal has named M.C. Sungaila to its list of the Top 100 Women Lawyers in California. This is the 17th year in a row that the Daily Journal has named M.C. to this list, the only appellate lawyer to appear so consistently for so long.
Throughout her decades-long career, M.C. Sungaila has remained an industry leader practicing at the frontiers of the law, while contributing to the evolution of appellate law, international space law, and legal education. In California, she continues to lead the Complex Appellate Litigation Group’s Orange County office, where she handles precedent-setting appellate matters with national implications; and last year, she co-founded Loyola Law School’s first-of-its-kind California Appellate Clinic, taught its flagship Space Law & Policy course, and continued to elevate female voices through her award-winning podcast all while developing a new specialty as an arbitrator with the American Arbitration Association.
Among her recent notable successes:
Retained following a multimillion-dollar judgment against a Southern California construction firm, M.C. successfully persuaded a California superior court judge to grant their client a completely new trial. The case involved an alleged violation of employment law, and the 6-day jury trial resulted in an economic damages award of $1.1 million, punitive damages award of $900,000, and request for attorney’s fees of $2.1 million. In the motion for new trial, which M.C. personally argued in the trial court, she argued that the trial court’s refusal to bifurcate the punitive damages phase and error in the jury instructions denied their client a fair trial. The trial court’s ruling conceded those errors during trial, concluded they likely led to the jury considering impermissible factors when reaching its verdict, and granted the motion.
In December 2024, Sungaila secured a precedent-setting victory before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of the City of Costa Mesa in a long-running dispute whose outcome impacts the policies that cities and counties in California – and nationwide – are able to enforce related to sober living homes. As Sungaila told the Daily Journal, the Costa Mesa ruling was her most significant win in nearly a decade of similar litigation, and the Ninth Circuit decision is likely to shape future challenges involving other cities with comparable sober-living regulations. At the time of the decision, The Orange County Register reported, “It’s a victory for the city that could have far-reaching implications in Southern California and throughout the nation, as communities struggle with proliferating sober homes that have turned some neighborhoods into veritable treatment campuses and put recovering residents at risk.”
Sungaila served as lead appellate counsel for Pacific Airshow in a now-resolved appeal arising out of business losses caused by an oil spill off the coast of Orange County, California. The appeal challenged the inclusion of Pacific Airshow into a class action settlement where it was not a class member and was denied any meaningful ability to opt out of the settlement.