About Eva Silva
Bay Area native Eva Silva brings over 11 years of legal experience to her role at Schaar & Silva LLP. After earning her undergraduate degree from California State University, Hayward (now California State University, East Bay), Eva earned her JD from Santa Clara University School of Law, where she was an active participant in the school’s Moot Court and Law Review. During a summer clerkship at the personal injury law firm of Van Der Walde & Associates (now Caputo & Van Der Walde), Eva discovered her passion for personal injury law. Contrary to the negative stereotypes that many people have about personal injury practices, Eva was moved by her clients’ stories of their lives having changed-sometimes forever-in a second, due to someone else’s negligence. Feeling a strong desire to help people who had been harmed, Eva committed to practicing personal injury law, and she still feels that same drive and commitment today.
After graduating from law school, Eva stayed with Caputo & Van Der Walde for 13 years, before co-founding Schaar & Silva LLP with fellow attorney Dan Schaar in 2017. In her role as Managing Attorney, Eva combines her experience second-chairing cases, coordinating a legal research and writing department, and opposing countless Motions for Summary Judgment. Eva is a member of Consumer Attorneys of California, the Santa Clara County Trial Lawyers Association, and the Santa Clara County Bar Association. For the past several years, she has been recognized as a Super Lawyers Rising Star, an honor reserved for 2.5% of attorneys who are under 40 or who have been in practice for less than 10 years. In 2016, Eva and her partner Dan Schaar were nominated for the Santa Clara County Trial Lawyers’ Association’s Trial Lawyer of the Year award.
When not at the office or in court, Eva enjoys spending time with her husband and two young daughters. Her interests include snowboarding and hiking, and she enjoys getting to know every one of Schaar & Silva’s clients as a person with a unique story.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Trial Lawyers for Justice
These results are credited to Trial Lawyers for Justice. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
Carrie DeJongh, 40, of Hull, Iowa, died on June 9, 2015 after receiving iodinated contrast dye for a CT scan at Sioux Center Health, when the physician treating her gave her an antihistamine but did not immediately check her vital signs or give epinephrine. Her family sued Sioux Center Health and Dr. Roy T. Slice for negligence, and both defendants denied the allegations. A Sioux County jury in Orange City returned a $29.5 million verdict on June 13, 2018, covering DeJongh's pain and suffering before her death and loss of consortium for her husband and four children. No appeal, remittitur or reduction has turned up since.
In February 2017, a physician assistant at a UnityPoint urgent care clinic in Des Moines diagnosed Joseph Dudley with the flu despite a negative flu test, sent him home on Tamiflu, and never ordered a complete blood count. Two days later Dudley was hospitalized with bacterial meningitis caused by an undetected heart valve infection, spent eight days in a medically induced coma, and suffered a series of strokes that left him with permanent brain damage, hearing loss, vertigo and nerve damage. A Polk County jury tried the malpractice claim against physician assistant Melanie Choos and Central Iowa Hospital Corp, doing business as UnityPoint Clinic, over a week in November 2022 and returned a $27,000,000 verdict, all of it noneconomic damages. The defense moved for a new trial afterward and UnityPoint said it was weighing an appeal.
Richard J. Pellock, 80, had surgery to remove bladder cancer at UnityPoint Health Finley Hospital in Dubuque, Iowa in January 2015, and the operation succeeded. Days later he needed a second procedure for a post-surgical complication, and the nurse anesthetist handling that procedure induced anesthesia without first emptying his stomach despite signs he had a full one. Pellock aspirated, developed aspiration pneumonia and respiratory failure, and died. His widow and son sued the anesthesia group and a Dubuque County jury returned a $10 million verdict against it in September 2017, awarded entirely as loss-of-consortium damages. Defense lawyers were reported as saying they would challenge the verdict, but no Iowa appellate decision in the case has ever been published.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
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