Christine D. Spagnoli is a partner of Greene, Broillet & Wheeler in El Segundo, specializing in representing plaintiffs in product liability, personal injury and legal malpractice actions. She has obtained many multimillion-dollar verdicts, including the 1999 General Motors case in which a defective fuel tank was found responsible for the burn injuries of two adults and four children, where the jury returned with a landmark $4.9 billion verdict. She was co-counsel in the largest personal injury verdict in California, which resulted in a $58 million verdict for a man severely burned by a defective O-ring. 

Her achievements cover the full range of personal injury and product liability cases. Recently, Chris served as the Plaintiffs’ Co-Lead Counsel in the Federal Express Vehicle Collision Cases resulting from the May 2015 crash involving a FedEx tractor-trailer that crossed a median in Orland, California colliding with a charter bus full of high school students, killing 10 and injuring dozens. The cases settled in October of 2017 on the eve of trial after Chris and her team successfully fought efforts by FedEx to exclude the driver’s cell phone records from the trial. She has also served as the Plaintiffs’ Liaison Counsel in coordinated cases involving defective Cooper Tires as well as on the California Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee for cases involving defective Firestone tires on Ford Explorers. 

Chris earned widespread recognition for her work as co-lead trial counsel in the 2001 negligence case against Southern California Edison, which resulted in a $21 million verdict for an electrocuted avocado picker. Among her other noteworthy cases are Brezovec v. State of California – $8.8 million, a brain/motor vehicle injury case, Ogden v. Hamm Brothers Construction – $6.4 million, a personal injury matter, and McGee v. The City of Alameda – $25 million, an electrocuted construction worker. 

Chris was honored by the American Association of Justice with its prestigious Harry M. Philo Award which recognizes an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the civil justice system and whose work has advanced the safety and protection of American consumers. In 2012, the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles recognized Chris as its Trial Lawyer of the Year, the first time in the history of the organization that a woman trial attorney received that honor. In 2001 she was named Most Outstanding Young Trial Lawyer, the F. Scott Baldwin Award, by the American Association for Justice (AAJ), New Lawyers Division. She also received Loyola Law School’s 2001 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award. She has also been nominated as a finalist for the Consumer Attorneys of Los Angeles Trial Lawyer of the Year and the Consumer Attorneys of California Trial Lawyer of the Year on multiple occasions. 

Greene, Broillet & Wheeler