Ethics & The Addict: Detection and Treatment of Addiction and Compliance with ABA Model Ethical Rules for Competency

Francine Ward heads Monty White’s Business and Intellectual Property Law Group, and manages the Palm Desert office. She is a 1989 graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center and admitted to practice in California, New York, and the District of Columbia. Francine’s IP focus is on copyrights, trademarks, Internet, publishing, and entertainment law issues. In her business law practice, she reviews, prepares, and negotiates a variety of contracts, and advises clients on the proper selection of appropriate business entities.

Francine’s clients include authors, musicians, designers, reality television personalities and business owners, startups, entertainment companies, an charitable nonprofits that are building a brand, protecting an existing brand, developing content, starting a business, writing a book, or composing music. Her clients may be collaborating on the creation of content, being sued for copyright or trademark infringement, wanting to sue someone for copyright or trademark infringement, or just needing advice regarding internet law related issues.

Additionally, Francine provides pro bono services to a number of individuals and nonprofits including: Legacies in Motion, a charity dedicated to helping underserved children and their families throughout the world; The Felix Organization, a charity that provides opportunities and new experiences to enrich the lives of children growing up in the foster care system; and California Lawyers for the Arts, a nonprofit that empowers the creative community by providing education, representation, and dispute resolution.

Francine serves on the Advisory Board to the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs, and is a leader in the ABA’s 19,000 Intellectual Property Law Section, where she is a member of the IP Council, the section’s governing body. She is also Vice Chair of the Right of Publicity Committee and Vice Chair of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Committee. Francine also teaches intellectual property law at the California Desert Trial Academy College of Law.

Harold Owens has always had a passion for music throughout his life, but has also struggled with addiction. After entering recovery and basically starting his life over, Harold wanted to give back to the people that helped him, and help others that were in the same situation he was. He went back to school, and found work in recovery centers, later becoming program director at a treatment center in Los Angeles. From there, he was offered a job with MusiCares dealing with recovery in the entertainment industry. MusiCares is a Grammy funded operation that allows musicians and other folks in the industry to get the help they need without having to worry about expenses. MusiCares has helped thousands of musicians and people in the industry and continues to support the music industry to this day.

David is the managing partner and a co-founder of the firm. He began his career with the esteemed New York trial attorney Louis Nizer. His current practice spans both commercial and class action litigation as well as transactional matters, the latter with a special emphasis on entertainment, technology and intellectual property law.

David has served in several leadership roles in connection with complex class action litigation. From 2009 to 2015, he and the firm served as co-team leader and class counsel in class actions involving the overdraft fee practices of three national banks, resulting in cumulative settlements of over $430 million on behalf of those banks’ customers. In 2012, David was appointed co-lead counsel by two different federal district court judges in class actions involving major record labels' treatment of digital download income in their accounting to recording artists and other royalty participants; settlements in those cases totaled $23 million and included significant prospective relief in the form of an ongoing royalty adjustment for class members. And he and the firm served, following their appointment by Federal District Court Judge Jon S. Tigar, as co-lead counsel in class action litigation against Apple and 12 of the nation’s major application developers over the alleged surreptitious harvesting of consumers’ contact information from their iDevices; a $5.3 million class settlement was recently reached in that case.

David has a wide-ranging entertainment and music law practice, encompassing both litigation and transactional work. He is frequently called upon to counsel and advise individuals and estates on the disposition of their creative property (i.e., songs, recordings, literary material, visual art, etc.) and royalty interests. Over the years, his clients have included many mainstays of the Bay Area music, film and video game industries. In addition to carving out an expertise representing leaving band members (including from such platinum and multi-platinum acts as PAPA ROACH, 4 NON-BLONDES, CAKE, MARILYN MANSON, and SOCIAL DISTORTION), David has also served as attorney of record or music industry expert in several high profile rock-and-roll divorces, including those of Jerry Garcia (GRATEFUL DEAD, JERRY GARCIA BAND), Paul DeLisle (SMASHMOUTH), Tre Cool (GREEN DAY), and Lars Ulrich (METALLICA). This work has given him a unique perspective on intra-band dynamics and management.

For a two-year term, David served as chairman of the American Bar Association's Forum on the Entertainment and Sports Industries. He has been a panelist and featured speaker at numerous entertainment, technology and video game industry events. In 2007, he co-chaired with Microsoft's lead in-house copyright attorney the LSI-sponsored Entertainment Technology Law Summit in Seattle. That same year, the American Bar Association chose him to present its annual Presidential Showcase Program, "Privacy, Copyright and Parental Control in the Age of YouTube, MySpace and Beyond." For the last dozen years, he has been a featured speaker at the South by Southwest Interactive/Music Conference in Austin, Texas, on topics ranging from recent developments in music industry litigation to the future of cloud computing.

For four consecutive spring semesters, David lectured in law at the University of California at Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall), where he helped develop and implement the core curriculum for the school's entertainment law class. David has also guest lectured at the law schools of the University of San Francisco, Pepperdine and Stanford University, among others.

For 14 years David served on the board of trustees (including as vice-chairman and chairman) of the Blue Bear School of Music in San Francisco. A highlight of his career remains interviewing the inestimable Frank Zappa at his home studio in Los Angeles for a special issue of the Entertainment and Sports Lawyer on art and censorship.

Carey Caruso was among those who graduated in the 1st Whittier Law School Class of 1978.

Since then he has been in private practice specializing in criminal defense work. Mr. Caruso sits on the Evaluation Committee of the Lawyer’s Assistance Program (LAP) run by the California State Bar. This program attempts to help attorneys with substance abuse problems and mental health issues.

He is the lawyer-coach for Woodrow Wilson High School in helping a class of students prepare for the Constitutional Rights Foundation California Mock Trial Program.

In 1989 he was elected president of the Italian American Lawyers Association. He helped organize and participated in a legal clinic at Homeboys Community Center assisting that under serviced community with legal assistance.

Mr. Caruso is AV rated in Martindale-Hubble, past president of the Italian American Lawyers Association, member of the L.A. County Bar Association, the Criminal Courts Bar Association and the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice. He is admitted to all California State Courts and all Southern California Federal Courts.