Darrell Salomon

"Salomon is a no-nonsense, plain spoken person."
Former California PUC Commissioner and San Francisco Public Defender Geoff Brown quoted in the San Francisco Daily Journal.

Darrell Salomon is retired antitrust and employment law trial attorney. He is fourth generation Californian who traces his ancestry on his mother's side to one of Sonoma County's first County Commissioners. His father was an independent motion picture producer in Hollywood. Born in San Francisco, he was raised in Holloywood and educated in Catholic schools. In his junior year at Bellarmine College Preparatory, a Jesuit day and boarding school in San Jose, he won first place in extemporaneous speech in the National Forensic League national speech finals. In his senior year he won the D’Alton Power Scholarship to Georgetown University given once each four years to a student from the State of California. At Georgetown he was an inter-collegiate debater and News Editor of the Hoya, the student newspaper. He was admitted before graduation to the University of San Francisco School of Law, there earning both a Doctor of Laws and a Bachelor of Arts degree. Upon graduation he applied for employment to one firm, the Law Offices of Joseph. L. Alioto, was hired, and spent the next decade as an associate and personal attorney of Mr. Alioto, a noted antitrust attorney and mayor of San Francisco.

During his time at the Alioto firm Salomon represented antitrust and employment law plaintiffs before federal courts throughout the nation and in the Supreme Court of the United States. He successfully twice argued and defended in the U.S. Supreme Court Ostrofe v. H.S. Crocker 433 U.S. 584, a landmark plaintiff’s employment law/antitrust case in which the Ninth Circuit held that an employee terminated for refusing to engage in a nationwide price fixing conspiracy was entitled to treble damages and a mandatory award of attorneys’ fees under the federal antitrust laws.

Salomon was lead counsel in Fremont Unified School District v. Sun Microscopes, a nationwide school equipment price fixing class action. He was counsel in the Sugar and Lithograph Labels nationwide price fixing class actions. He argued for the co-conspirator antitrust jurisdiction rule before the Ninth Circuit in Sun Garden Piedmont Label Co. v. Sun Garden Packing Co. He represented the world’s largest Honda motorcycle dealer in a successful antitrust jury case against American Honda. He successfully represented Farr Company, an international filter company, in litigation challenging the then largest KKR leveraged buyout in history. He was lead counsel in numerous picture distribution cases and a federal jury trial in Las Vegas on behalf of Syufy Enterprises, an interstate film exhibition chain. He was co-counsel in Mulvey v. Samuel Goldwyn, a landmark motion picture “block booking” antitrust jury trial in Los Angeles resulting in a substantial verdict.

In 1986 Salomon joined the Am Law 100 national law firm of Arter & Hadden (resident in its Los Angeles office) as an equity partner, where he remained until 1994, trying antitrust and employment cases statewide. He then accepted a similar partnership in Keck, Mahin, and Cate, a Chicago based Am Law 100 national firm, resident in their San Francisco office. In San Francisco Salomon tried the “newspaper trial of the century” on behalf of the Independent Newspaper Group on unfair trade practice grounds against the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle, resulting in a substantial jury verdict, settled on appeal, with enhanced fees awarded by the court for “the outstanding performance of counsel.” He won a jury verdict exonerating “The Diet Center” against nation wide antitrust attack. In Oakland in 2009 he was lead counsel in one of the few individual wage and hour jury cases actually tried to conclusion before a jury, resulting in a successful verdict. In 1996 he opened up his own firm, Salomon Law Group, PC. focusing on employment law cases statewide. He is experienced in the field of public figure and public official libel law and has represented a number of political figures in libel and related matters including Dianne Feinstein, Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, California Senator S.I. Hayakawa, California Senator Alan Cranston, California Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy and San Francisco Mayor Joseph L. Alioto.

Salomon is the former two term President of the San Francisco Civil Service Commission, and a former member of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. He is a recipient of the United Negro College Fund Distinguished Service Citation. He negotiated the settlement of the Officers For Justice litigation integrating all ranks of the San Francisco Police Department, previously an 85% white male institution, and wrote the City’s first Affirmative Action Plan. He negotiated and passed rule changes to first provide for the entrance of women into the San Francisco Fire Department. In January 2000 he accepted a temporary assignment as Chief Assistant District Attorney of San Francisco by District Attorney Terence Hallinan, who engaged him to improve the trial performance of the office. Salomon launched a training program for the entire office, hired experienced attorneys from other DA offices, and promoted winning trial attorneys within the San Francisco office to key positions. He initiated “Community Courts,” a non judicial program dealing with quality of life violations on the streets of the city, created the office's first elder abuse unit, and instituted an Innocence Project, the first of its kind for a DA office in Northern California, to support the release of convicts later shown to be innocent through DNA analysis. Along with Hallinan he opposed California Proposition 21, which granted prosecutors the option of trying juvenile defendants in adult rather than juvenile courts.

Salomon has served as Lecturer in Law at the University of Santa Clara, as Adjunct Professor at Golden Gate School of Law, and as a member of the faculty of the College of Advocacy, Hastings College of Law. He has served as an elected member of the Board of Governors of the Consumer Attorneys of California and the appointed member of the State Bar Committee On The Administrtion of Justice. At the conclusion of his service as a city commissioner the San Francisco Board of Supervisors awarded him a Certificate of Honor citing him as a “distinguished fourth generation San Franciscan, who has served his native City as a member of the Human Rights Commission, Civil Service Commission, War Memorial Board of Trustees and as a confidant to Mayors and Supervisors; known for his brilliant advocacy of just causes and as a trial attorney practicing in the courts throughout California.” For over 40 years he has received the Martindale Hubble AV Preeminent standard, its highest rating, given to attorneys who are “ranked at the highest level of professional excellence for their legal expertise, communication skills, and ethical standards by their peers.”

PRESS QUOTES:

“Salomon is a virtuoso in the courtroom."
San Francisco Independent.

"Salomon is a high-profile attorney with plenty of political savvy."
Matier & Ross, San Francisco Chronicle.

"He's been my attorney for years. I've seen Darrell Salomon in action, and I think he's a smart attorney."
Publisher Ted Fang, quoted in the San Francisco Recorder.

"Salomon is a no-nonsense, plain spoken person."
Former PUC Commissioner, and former San Francisco Public Defender Geoff Brown quoted in the San Francisco Daily Journal.

"Salomon is a very aggressive and able litigator. . ."
Attorney Gary Halling of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, quoted in the San Francisco Daily Journal.

"Salomon has gone against some of the best lawyers in the country."
Anti-trust attorney Joseph M. Alioto, quoted in the San Francisco Examiner..

"Darrell moves through a lot of circles. He knows people from the establishment, he knows people from the law world, and he knows Bohemian types--writers and journalists."
Former California State Librarian and California historian Dr. Kevin Starr, quoted in the San Francisco Examiner..

"Salomon has a brilliant mind."
Former San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan, quoted in the San Francisco Recorder.