Peter obtained his bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University in New Jersey and his Juris Doctor from Southwestern University in Los Angeles. He has been a licensed attorney in California since 1981. Peter is admitted to practice in all state courts as well as all United States District Courts for the State of California and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He has also appeared in trial courts in Florida, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. Peter has been named a Super Lawyer every year since 2010.
Peter is currently a member of the State Bar of California, American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA), Consumer Attorneys of Los Angeles (CAALA), and American Attorneys for Justice (AAJ). He has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School and the University of West Los Angeles School of Law where he has taught litigation skills and legal research. Peter is also a trained Mediator having received part of his mediation training at Pepperdine University’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution.
Peter’s trial practice emphasizes personal injury, wrongful death, products liability, and police misconduct cases. He has over 41 years of trial experience and has obtained multiple million-dollar verdicts and settlements (several of them record setting) for his clients. Peter (and his co-counsel, John Burton) were the first attorneys ever to obtain a products liability/wrongful death verdict against TASER, International, Inc., the manufacturer of the TASER® Electronic Control Weapon. As a result of this noteworthy verdict, Peter and Mr. Burton were the subject of a cover story in California Lawyer Magazine, the official publication of the State Bar of California (TASERS: Lethal or Not, December 2008). Peter also holds the distinction of obtaining the largest verdict at the time against a police agency in Ventura County, California history as well as one of the two largest settlements ever reached with the City of Key West, Florida. A number of his cases have been featured in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Your Times, the Boston Globe, the Charlotte Observer, the Ventura County Star, the Los Angeles Daily Journal, and Lawyers Weekly. His cases have also been featured on CBS News and 60 Minutes.
Peter is the co-author of “Representing Clients Injured by TASER Electronic Control Devices” which appears in the 2011 edition of Civil Rights Litigation and Attorney Fees Annual Handbook published by Thompson-West. Peter has been interviewed extensively by various media outlets as an expert on TASER® brand electronic control devices and appears in the 2016 feature length documentary, Killing them Safely.
