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available in German languageMr. Campbell is the sole attorney in the office. He is admitted to the practice of law in California and Ohio only. He is a referral attorney for the Austrian, German and Swiss Consulates in San Francisco, California. The central area of his practice is in assisting American, Austrian, German and Swiss clients with transnational legal problems in the United States, Austria Germany and Switzerland. These are not the only legal cases that he handles, as he also assists many Californians with typical legal problems here in California that have no international legal issues.
The focus of Mr. Campbell's practice is in three areas: civil litigation, trusts and estates and family law. Mr. Campbell has tried numerous court cases before judges and juries and prosecuted appeals in the court of appeals. He has also been involved in Arbitration and Mediation in these areas as well. Mr. Campbell uses both major computer based research engines, Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw, in his practice to ensure the latest in legal technology for and cost-effective handling of his clients' cases.
Mr. Campbell's litigation in the judicial system is limited to personal injury cases and commercial or contractual disputes. Personal injury cases include motor vehicle accidents, assault and battery cases, premises liability and defamation. For example, Mr. Campbell has represented German tourists and students who have been involved in automobile accidents in California to recover for the injuries they sustained while they were vacationing or studying here. The commercial and contractual disputes generally involve the breach of contracts, partnership dissolutions and licensing agreements. For example, Mr. Campbell assisted a German company in asserting its rights and recovering damages for a patent licensing agreement that had been breached. He also assisted a California corporation in terminating a franchise agreement with restrictive covenants and recovering monies owed it by an Ohio corporation, in which Ohio law controlled. Other breach of contract litigation has involved issues from real estate ownership to residential construction contracts. Mr. Campbell has represented both plaintiffs and defendants, whether they are individuals, partnerships or corporations.
He also represented the California subsidiary of a German high technology corporation and its directors in litigation asserting the subsidiary's licensing and intellectual property rights in the company's technology as well as other proprietary rights after the German parent company filed for bankruptcy in Germany and attempted to sell the assets of the California subsidiary. He has also represented German and Swiss bankruptcy trustees in collecting assets located in the USA. Many cases involve difficult issues concerning the court's jurisdiction over foreigners and service of court process in foreign countries. He is well versed in all of these subjects and has successfully brought motions preventing California courts from exercising their jurisdiction over German nationals. An article on this topic appears under Publications in German.
Mr. Campbell provides general estate planning, which involves a determination as to whether a trust or will is necessary to ensure the transfer of assets at death, depending on the needs of the client. However, he has also conducted sophisticated litigation involving probate proceedings and trust administrations. This has resulted in the successful revocation of trust transfers by family members and friends because of fraud and undue influence and forcing accountings and distributions by reluctant trust and probate administrators. In addition, he has represented many German heirs in collecting their inheritances from California estates and represented U.S. heirs in asserting their rights in Swiss & German inheritance cases. This includes the proceedings necessary to obtain a certificate of inheritance from the German courts. Mr. Campbell has also acted as the administrator in probate estates when the heirs live outside of California.
Mr. Campbell has handled many dissolution of marriage cases, some have involved difficult issues of child custody and division of community property. He has handled numerous contested custody cases, including cases involving proceedings under the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction. For example, he has successfully sought the return of two children taken by their German mothers to Germany and Switzerland on behalf of the American and German fathers and got child custody awarded to the fathers in California. In 2007, he was also successful in seeking the return of two boys to their German father in California, after the mother retained them in Germany. An article on this topic appears under Publications in English. In addition, he successfully returned an Austrian daughter to her mother in Vienna. He has also represented German and German-American couples in dissolving their marriages after they moved to California only to have one spouse decide that s/he wanted to return to Germany. These cases also involve the same issues regarding a court's jurisdiction and the service of court process as the civil litigation that he does. This is all too often ignored by unsophisticated family law attorneys.