Practice Areas
Practice Description
Roberta Kraus has represented public agencies for over 22 years. She is an accomplished litigator in both state and federal trial courts and appellate courts. She has briefed and argued more than 35 appellate matters in state and federal appellate courts, winning approximately 90% of the time. She has successfully prepared and argued hundreds of case dispositive pre-trial motions involving diverse issues such as claims for state and federal constitutional violations, including for wrongful search and seizure and excessive force; Monell claims; wrongful termination; and dangerous condition of public property. Although she currently focuses her practice on trial court motions and appeals involving public agencies, in her more than 37 years as an attorney, she also has handled a wide variety of matters in state and federal courts involving insurance bad faith, medical malpractice, construction defect and inverse condemnation issues, including handling jury trials, arbitrations, and mediations. Ms. Kraus also has taught legal writing courses at Western State University College of Law and the paralegal program at UCI.
Representative Matters
- Co-wrote a brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals with Erwin Chemerinsky, then-Dean of the UCI School of Law, resulting in a published opinion in favor of a public-school teacher accused of violating the Establishment Clause
- Successfully defended a county and its employees in multiple claims of wrongful detention of minors by winning case dispositive motions that subsequently were upheld on appeal
- Successfully defended police officers in a wrongful death claim where the mother of the young man who died claimed the officers illegally stopped and searched him and then chased him onto a freeway where he was hit by a car, successfully arguing on appeal that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity
- Successfully defended a city against claims brought for excessive fines and R.I.C.O. violations based on parking fines imposed, winning both in the district court and in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
- Successfully defended a local school district from claims for battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, violation of state civil rights and negligent hiring brought against it by an autistic student
- Successfully defended a county on appeal from claims that an employee had sexually assaulted a co-worker
Education
- Western State University College of Law (J.D., 1984)
- California State University, Fullerton (B.A., 1981)