Areas of Dispute Resolution

Throughout his legal career, Matt Wertheim primarily represented injured persons, claimants and plaintiffs seeking justice after life-altering events. He was also retained by defendants, including high-net-worth individuals and families, in situations where they were personally sued, underinsured, or wanted to ensure that their insurance-appointed counsel provided a strong and strategic defense.

By representing both plaintiffs and defendants, Matt developed a rare, balanced understanding of how each side evaluates liability, damages, risk, and settlement. As a lawyer, this dual perspective helped him consistently achieve exceptional results for his clients. As a mediator, it allows him to speak credibly and empathetically to every participant in the room.

Matt excels at bridging valuation gaps, especially when the parties begin the day in entirely different universes. When impasse threatens progress (which is rare), he has the foresight and temperament to keep discussions respectful and productive.

Matt has represented injured persons in multiple jury trials and has secured hundreds of out-of-court settlements totaling in the tens of millions of dollars. His cases have involved:

• Automobile, bicycle, and motorcycle accidents
• Professional Negligence (Medical, Legal, Accounting, and Investment Advisor Services)
• Premises liability

This depth of experience, as a negotiator, trial lawyer, and advocate, gives Matt a sophisticated understanding of the personal injury matters that come to mediation.

Matt mediates a wide range of real estate disputes, including purchase-agreement breaches, disclosure issues, title defects, easements, and other buyer-seller conflicts. His deep understanding of real estate transaction structure, standard contract terms, and disclosure obligations allows him to quickly identify the issues that matter most in mediation.

With more than $500 million in transactions handled during his legal career, Matt has represented buyers, sellers, lessors, lessees, brokers, and agents. He has reviewed, drafted, negotiated, and revised hundreds of purchase agreements, leases, easements, encroachment agreements, deeds, notes, and related documents. He has also litigated claims involving breach of contract, nondisclosure of material defects, encroachment and trespass, and wrongful tree cutting.

Before each mediation, Matt studies the briefs and key documents, purchase agreements, disclosure packets, title reports, inspection records, and the transaction history, to understand each party's position and the real-world barriers to resolution.

Real estate disputes benefit from timely resolution. Properties under contract can lose value when deals stall, and litigation over failed transactions is costly relative to the property itself. Matt helps parties evaluate their options realistically, whether modifying the deal, unwinding it fairly, or resolving post-closing disputes efficiently.

Matt has been involved as a mediator or attorney in scores of dysfunctional family disputes, helping the participants reach a resolution and, more importantly, maintain generational relationships. Having handled these cases, he knows how emotional and charged the mediations can be, and for these cases he always has pre-mediation Zoom calls with unrepresented parties or with their counsel when litigation is under way.

Whether it's a sibling rivalry, a younger sibling being named trustee over an angry older sibling, a nasty step-parent, or an unequal estate plan that may involve issues of undue influence and/or accounting, Matt works with the participants to forge a resolution that the lawyers can then turn into a marital settlement agreement, an amendment to a trust, or a distribution to a child or sibling.

Matt has taken neighbor tree and fence disputes to trial and has advised clients on a wide range of easement and boundary issues. He understands that, much like family conflicts, neighbor disputes can be highly emotional and deeply personal. As a mediator, Matt makes a deliberate effort to ensure each participant feels fully heard and that their perspective is genuinely understood.

In every case he mediates, Matt's sole objective is resolution. With neighbor disputes in particular, he helps parties move toward practical, constructive, and often cost-sharing solutions that meet the needs of both sides and reduce the stress, expense, and uncertainty of continued conflict.

Commercial disputes are high-stakes, high-pressure, and often deeply disruptive to a business. Whether the issues involve fraud, tortious interference, unfair competition, breach of fiduciary duty, or other business torts, these cases benefit enormously from a mediator who understands both the legal landscape and the business realities driving the conflict.

With more than forty years of commercial litigation experience, Matt brings a courtroom-tested perspective to every mediation. He knows how these cases unfold, what discovery is likely to reveal, and how judges and juries tend to react to different fact patterns. This insight allows him to help parties cut through posturing and evaluate their positions with clarity and realism.

Matt works closely with counsel to identify the pressure points, evidentiary challenges, and strategic risks that will shape the outcome if the case proceeds. His ability to translate litigation risk into productive negotiation gives parties a grounded framework for meaningful settlement discussions.

Commercial litigation drains resources: legal fees, executive time, operational bandwidth, and often reputation. Even strong cases carry uncertainty, and the cost of winning can exceed the value of the dispute itself. Matt's goal is simple: help the parties achieve a resolution that is fair, reasonable, and better than the uncertainty and cost of continued litigation.

Over the course of his legal career, Matt represented some of the Bay Area's most respected restaurants and small businesses. He defended employers in class-action wage-and-hour matters and represented employees in harassment and severance disputes. He also handled partnership dissolutions and conflicts over business assets, cases where financial stakes, personal relationships, and reputational concerns often collide.

This breadth of experience gives Matt a deep understanding of the legal, financial, and human dynamics that drive business and employment disputes. As a mediator, he draws on this background to quickly grasp the issues in play, understand the relationships between owners, managers, employers, and employees, and guide parties toward practical, durable solutions.

Many business disputes overlap with insurance coverage issues. Matt's experience as general counsel to a San Francisco reinsurer, including taking a coverage matter successfully to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal, handling bad-faith claims, and advising clients on complex coverage questions, gives him an additional layer of insight that few mediators bring to the table.