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Attorney Pedram Esfandiary Named Partner at Wisner Baum

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Wisner Baum is pleased to announce that attorney Pedram Esfandiary has been named partner. At the age of 30, Pedram is the youngest lawyer to earn this distinction at the firm.

“Pedram has already made an indelible mark on the firm’s mass tort cases and I know this will continue for many years to come,” says Wisner Baum managing partner, R. Brent Wisner. “We worked closely together during the Monsanto litigation, where he proved himself time and again as an invaluable member of the trial teams in the first three cases that went before juries. These cases not only resulted in substantial verdicts, they also helped inspire positive changes to protect people and the environment. Without question, Pedram embodies our firm’s mission to obtain justice for our clients in their time of need and make the world a better place.”

“I have seen Pedram grow so much since he joined us just after passing the California bar in 2016,” says senior partner Michael L. Baum. “His deep interest and passion for cases that have societal implications has energized our firm and opened up new ways for us to help people who really need it. This partnership is well-earned, and I am confident Pedram will help Wisner Baum reach new heights.”

Pedram Esfandiary works out of Wisner Baum’s Los Angeles office, where he focuses his practice primarily on mass torts, class actions, consumer fraud, and civil rights cases. He is currently leading Wisner Baum’s toxic baby food litigation against several of the country’s top manufacturers. The cases allege companies and brands like Gerber, Happy Baby, Beech-Nut, Earth’s Best Organic, Walmart, and others knowingly sell baby food with “dangerously high levels” of arsenic, lead, and mercury. Studies have found exposure to toxic heavy metals at a young age can cause significant neurodevelopmental damage. Our lawsuits allege the heavy metals in baby foods caused children to develop autism and ADHD.

In October of 2023, Esfandiary will take a baby food lawsuit to trial in California state court. The case was filed on behalf of plaintiffs Melissa and Lorenzo Cantabrana for their son Noah in Superior Court for the State of California, County of Los Angeles (Case No. 21STCV22822). The Cantabranas allege their son was diagnosed with autism and ADHD after consuming high quantities of baby foods from several of the nation’s leading manufacturers.

Between 2018 and 2019, Pedram was an integral part of the trial teams that won multiple verdicts in the Monsanto Roundup litigation. In 2019, he helped win a historic $2 billion jury verdict on behalf of Alva and Alberta Pilliod, a California couple who both sprayed Roundup weed killer on their properties for 30 years. The jury in Pilliod, et al. v. Monsanto Co. determined that Roundup exposure caused Alva and Alberta’s non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and that Monsanto failed to warn the couple about the cancer risk associated with Roundup use.

Pedram also helped win two other Roundup cases, Johnson v. Monsanto Co.and Hardeman v. Monsanto Co., which resulted in jury verdicts worth $289 million and $80 million respectively. While all three jury verdicts were subsequently reduced, they each survived appeal and litigation ended with significant compensation to the plaintiffs.

More recently, Pedram and his colleagues earned a $1.25 million settlement against the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) on behalf of a Marine Corps Veteran. The lawsuit alleged that the LAPD’s unlawful crowd-control tactics used during the May 30, 2020 protests, violated our client’s civil rights and caused life-threatening injuries, including a traumatic brain injury. Our client was shot in the head with a bean bag projectile, fired by an LAPD police officer, while he was peacefully protesting ongoing police violence perpetuated against communities of color, particularly Black people, across the United States.

After two years of litigation, Pedram and his team obtained the largest settlement to date stemming from the 2020 protests in Los Angeles. Nothing in the settlement was construed as an admission of liability by any party, including the LAPD.

In another recent civil rights case, Pedram obtained a settlement from the City of Irvine when its former mayor violated one of its citizen’s first amendment rights when she blocked him from posting to her personal Facebook page which she was using as a public forum concerning official mayoral business. He also earned a settlement for a client against the Burbank Police Department that alleged police misconduct, civil rights violations, assault, battery, unlawful seizure, excessive force, and negligence.

Pedram has won or helped the firm win the following awards and accolades:

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