John Gomez
VerifiedAbout John Gomez
John H. Gomez is the Founder and CEO of Gomez Trial Attorneys, a San Diego-based personal injury, mass tort, class action, and employment law firm he founded alone in 2005 with a card table, six cases, and one employee. The firm now has offices in San Diego, Solana Beach, Bakersfield, Riverside, Palm Springs, and St. Petersburg, FL. John earned his B.A. magna cum laude from the University of San Diego in 1989, where he was an Academic All-American football player, and his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1993. After law school he served as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of California, trying border, narcotics, and corruption cases and winning 20 jury trials in a row before turning to plaintiffs' work. He has taken more than 50 cases to jury verdict, with results in excess of $1 million, $10 million, and $100 million.
Notable case results
A San Diego jury held former county toxicologist Kristin Rossum and San Diego County responsible for the 2000 fentanyl killing of Greg de Villers, awarding his family $106 million in a wrongful death case tried by John Gomez.
A Kern County jury awarded William Kidd and his wife Elaine $16.2 million after he slipped at a Bakersfield El Pollo Loco and suffered a brain injury that later required surgery.
A San Diego jury returned a $10.8 million verdict against Pizza Hut after one of its delivery drivers drifted across a center divide and hit a mother and daughter head-on, leaving the daughter with a permanent brain injury.
A San Diego County jury ordered Starbucks to pay roughly $7.5 million after chiropractor Anthony Zaccaglin slipped on a freshly mopped store floor, struck his head, and suffered a brain injury that ended his career.
A San Diego federal jury awarded the Deruyver family nearly $6.5 million after their 9-month-old daughter suffered third-degree burns from hot coffee at the Omni La Costa Resort and Spa.
John Gomez represented the families of CHP officer Mark Saylor and three relatives killed in a runaway Lexus near Santee, reaching a 2010 settlement with Toyota in the crash that triggered the company's sudden-acceleration recalls.
Wrongful death verdict ('American Beauty Murder')
Against El Pollo Loco (slip and fall)
Against Pizza Hut
Against DePuy/Johnson & Johnson (ASR hip implant)
Against Starbucks (slip and fall)
Against Omni Hotels (coffee burn)
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
