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PRACTICE AREAS
ENTERTAINMENT LAW
Sheila's law career had a special focus on Entertainment law, as she has a background in the industry. She has worked with attorneys at Fox and NBC Universal on Motion Picture and Television contract drafting and scripted and unscripted series. She became a Partner of a Production Company in 2016, Gearmark Pictures, specializing in digital series and new media content and emerging into motion picture production. At Gearmark, Sheila conducted negotiations of contracts for production company and its projects including negotiations for key talent to crew members; drafting and oversight of production contracts for motion picture, new media, and digital content; researching relevant employment law and union/guild requirements for productions; researching chain-of-title, copyright, and trademark issues (pre-stage for E&O); negotiating with product placement and sponsor affiliates for placement in projects; and was heavy involvement in all stages of physical production.
Contracts, Production Consultant (Scripts, On-Set)
CIVIL & COMMERCIAL
Receiverships, Civil Litigation
As a Receiver, Sheila has worked across over 50 cities and counties in California and her firm, CRG, has provided solutions to over 200 different dilapidated properties and counting, with appointments by 113 different Superior Court judges and one United States District Court judge. With experience in health and safety, hazmat abatement, judgment enforcement, and rents and profits receiverships, no other receiver in California offers the breadth and experience of CRG.
As a CRG attorney, the legal team focuses on both legal drafting and litigation while simultaneously is involved in operations as the point person and team leader for remediation efforts on severely dilapidated properties. CRG's innovative approach includes litigating in both State and Federal court, hiring contractors and cleanup crews, and managing properties ranging from single family residences to large apartment complexes and motels. Examples of various projects include orchestrating the removal of 1,100 tons (2.4 million pounds) of debris from one 5-acre site (including $170,000 in recycling revenue); remediating an apartment building overrun by drug dealing and prostitution; recovering $120,000 from a mortgage fraud perpetrator on behalf of a 75-year-old previous owner; and managing a 267-pad mobile home park housing over 3,000 migrant farmworkers. Appointed on approximately 10 motels throughout the state, including the 73,000 square foot Saddleback Inn in Santa Ana, which was demolished after a fire; a dilapidated historic Route 66 motel in Needles, which was opened to the county fire department for training purposes; a large, thoroughly-vandalized hotel in Palmdale that will be brought back up to code and reopened; and a century-old hotel in Oroville that was cleared of drug dealers and vagrants, then revitalized to become housing for a local college; and a former drug den operating next to a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, now developing to become classrooms for drug abuse recovery and prevention.
Project for the Innocent
Sheila has always had a strong interest in innocence projects. At Loyola Law School, she served over a year in the Project for the Innocent and helped successfully achieve 3 exonerations in the Spring of 2017.
Exonerations of wrongful convictions, Habeus Corpus