Press Release - Sedgwick Attorney Elected Chairman of the OCBA Products Liability Section

December 2006

Sedgwick, Detert, Moran & Arnold LLP is pleased to announce that Sedgwick attorney Richard Crites has been elected to serve as chairman of the Orange County Bar Association's Products Liability Section for 2007. The OCBA provides a wide variety of programs, services and opportunities for more than 9,000 members. Its products liability section provides a forum to educate and inform members of recent developments in products liability law and related topics of interest.

"Like his fellow Sedgwick attorneys, Richard Crites is a leader within the legal profession, and the community," said Curtis Parvin, managing partner of Sedgwick's Orange County office. "The OCBA will greatly benefit from Richard's dedication to the ideals of the legal practice and his wealth of products liability expertise." 

"I am honored to take up this challenge and I look forward to the opportunity to work with fellow members of the legal community to foster a high level of excellence among attorneys in this specialized field of law," said Crites. 

Crites, a senior associate at Sedgwick, manages cases from inception through trial, including post-judgment practice. He has significant experience in myriad areas of the field, including pharmaceutical and dietary supplement cases, tire failure cases, fire subrogation, toxic tort and environmental contamination cases, work-place exposure claims, and other serious personal injury actions. In a crowning achievement, Crites was named as national coordinating counsel for a Tennessee manufacturer in nationwide subrogation litigation. In that role, Crites was instrumental in securing a unanimous defense verdict for his client, which The Daily Journal recognized as one of California's "Top 10 Defense Verdicts of 2004."  A Southern California native, Crites earned his B.A. from Cal Poly, Pomona and his J.D. from The George Washington University Law School.