Monterey, Salinas law firms to merge Jan. 1 – Monterey Herald

MONTEREY >> A merger creating what’s being called one of the largest law firms in Monterey County becomes effective Jan. 1.

Members of the Monterey law firm of Bohnen, Rosenthal & Kreeft will merge with L+G, LLP Attorneys at Law (formerly known as Lombardo & Gilles), headquartered in Salinas with offices in Monterey, Salinas, Hollister, King City and Paso Robles, a news release said.

Attorney Andrew Kreeft has left the firm and Tom Bohnen will continue his estate planning practice in Monterey as a sole practitioner, said Robert Rosenthal, who will head the new firm’s litigation department and remain in the Monterey office.

In separate interviews Wednesday, Jeff Gilles, 61, of L+G and Rosenthal, 66, agreed the merger will meld the strengths of both firms. The agreement evolved within the last six weeks after Rosenthal and Gilles, who were on opposing sides of a case, settled the case and discussed their futures.

“We started talking about where we wanted to be in 10 years,” Gilles said. “We felt this was a perfect fit for the two firms.”

L+G specializes in agriculture, food safety, land use, business and real estate, public agency, litigation/arbitration and the cannabis business while Bohnen, Rosenthal has a wider litigation scope.

The Salinas firm’s experienced litigators deal more in food recall work while the Monterey firm does “broad scope civil litigation and complex civil litigations — everything from a personal injury automobile accident to a partnership dispute or a corporate dispute so it was really fortuitous,” Rosenthal said. “He (Gilles) needed experienced litigators and I needed experienced transactional attorneys.”

Both attorneys said the meshing of their services will help clients. “It was a perfect symbiotic fit because of his (Rosenthal’s) years of personal and commercial litigation experience,” said Gilles. “It essentially creates one-stop shopping for our clients.”

The merger transpired because of “an interest on my behalf of affiliating with a firm that provided services we didn’t provide and finding a firm that needed services that we did provide,” said Rosenthal.

The union brings together Gilles, Jason Retterer, Paul Rovella, Aaron Johnson and Brad Sullivan of L+G. with Rosenthal and litigation associates Sergio H. Parra, Laura L. Franklin, and Matthew R. Rankin from his firm. The firm will also add another experienced litigator, said Rosenthal.

Bohnen, Rosenthal & Kreeft won the largest personal injury/products liability jury verdict in Monterey County history in 2014 in Hill vs. Toyota, according to a news release. In that case a California Superior Court jury found Toyota Motor Corp. liable for causing devastating injuries to Pacific Grove’s Chelsie Hill in a 2009 crash in Monterey.

After a five-week trial, the jury awarded the woman over $12.5 million in damages after they found that Toyota had known at the time it designed the 1996 4Runner that lap-only belts were needlessly hazardous but chose to equip its rear center seat with a lap-only belt, the news release state.