Recovering Elder Financial Exploitation Losses

Anne Marie Murphy, Partner | Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP

Anne Marie Murphy is a Partner at Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP, one of the nation’s premier plaintiff-side litigation firms, where her practice spans complex commercial litigation, class actions, consumer rights, securities and financial fraud, and elder abuse litigation. A recognized leader in the field of financial elder abuse, Anne Marie has tried elder abuse cases to jury verdict, published on holding financial institutions liable for elder exploitation, and spent more than a decade in leadership at California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform — making her one of the most experienced voices in California on recovering losses for exploited seniors and using the fee-shifting provisions of the Elder Abuse and Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act to make those recoveries economically viable.

• Education & Credentials

Anne Marie earned her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and her B.A. from Vassar College. While in law school, she served as a Legislative Assistant in the United States Senate, gaining early insight into the statutory drafting and policy considerations that underlie remedial legislation such as elder protection statutes. She holds an AV-Preeminent rating from Martindale-Hubbell and a 10/10 rating from AVVO.

• Recognition & Leadership

Anne Marie has been named to the 2026 Law dragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Financial and Consumer Lawyers and has been selected to Super Lawyers every year since 2013, including its Top 100 Northern California and Top 50 Women lists. The Daily Journal has recognized her among the Top 100 Women Lawyers in California and the Top 25 Plaintiff Attorneys in the state. She is a Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, has been named to the Irish Legal 100, has received multiple Presidential Awards of Merit from the Consumer Attorneys of California (CAOC), and was a finalist for CAOC’s Consumer Attorney of the Year. She serves on CAOC’s Board of Directors and Executive Committee, is a past Chair of its Women’s Caucus, co-chairs its annual Convention and Sonoma Seminar, and sits on the editorial board of CAOC’s
Forum Magazine.

• Professional Involvement

Anne Marie is a past President and current Board Secretary of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR), the state’s leading elder-rights advocacy organization, and served thirteen years (2010–2023) as a Commissioner on the California Commission on Access to Justice. She is the author of “Financial Elder Abuse: Holding Institutions Liable” (Forum Magazine, 2019) and has lectured extensively at accredited seminars on elder abuse litigation developments, continuing care retirement community litigation, class action settlements, trial skills, and amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. She is a member of the American Association for Justice, the San Mateo County Bar Association, the San Mateo Trial Lawyers Association, the Irish American Bar Association of Northern California, and is a
lifetime member of California Women Lawyers. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Berkeley Civil Justice Research Institute.

• Experience

Over her career, Anne Marie has served as court-appointed co-lead counsel in a nationwide securities class action, litigated against Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption, argued before the Ninth Circuit and the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, and recovered millions of dollars for consumers in nationwide class actions. She has tried cases to jury verdict in elder abuse, business, real estate, and probate and trust matters. Her deep experience litigating financial elder abuse claims against banks, brokerages, care facilities, and individual wrongdoers — together with her command of the attorneys’ fees, costs, and enhanced-remedies provisions available under California’s elder abuse statutes — makes her uniquely positioned to walk practitioners through building the plaintiff’s fee-shifting case and maximizing recovery for victims of elder financial exploitation.

Theresa E. Vitale, Partner | Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP

Theresa E. Vitale is a Partner in the Los Angeles office of Cotchett, Pitre &
McCarthy, LLP, where she represents individuals, consumers, whistleblowers, employees, and public entities in high-stakes litigation in state and federal courts and in arbitration. Her practice includes elder abuse, financial fraud, consumer class actions, catastrophic injury and wrongful death, environmental and toxic exposure, whistleblower and quitam matters, and municipal litigation. Theresa has recently been at the forefront of elder financial abuse litigation against major national banks, giving her firsthand experience in the pleading, discovery, and fee-shifting strategies that drive recoveries
for exploited seniors.

• Education & Credentials

Theresa earned her J.D. from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, with a concentration in public interest law, and her B.A. in English with a minor in Italian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She is admitted to practice in California. During law school, she completed an externship with the ACLU of Southern California’s Immigrants’ Rights Group, where she advocated on behalf of unaccompanied minors— early work that shaped her commitment to representing vulnerable populations.

• Recognition & Leadership

Theresa has been recognized as a Super Lawyers Rising Star each year from 2023 through 2026, and received the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s Pro Bono Award in both 2023 and 2024 for her work on animal trafficking fraud litigation. She serves as Co-Chair of Membership for the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Barristers/Young Attorneys Section, where she helps lead one of the largest young-lawyer organizations in the country.

• Professional Involvement

Beyond her practice, Theresa is active in her community as Membership Director of The Eagle Rock Association (TERA), a neighborhood nonprofit in Los Angeles. She is a frequent contributor to bar association programming and a committed pro bono advocate, and her public-interest background informs a litigation approach centered on accountability for institutions whose conduct harms individuals — including the financial institutions that facilitate or fail to prevent the exploitation of elderly customers.

• Experience

At Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, Theresa has litigated a broad range of complex matters, including elder financial abuse claims against major banks, toxic exposure cases involving hydrogen sulfide, animal trafficking fraud, trucking and product liability cases, sexual abuse matters, and consumer class actions. Her work on behalf of elder abuse victims has required her to navigate the interplay between California’s Elder Abuse and Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act, financial institution reporting obligations, and the statutory attorneys’ fee and enhanced-damages provisions that make individual elder exploitation cases economically viable to pursue — making her uniquely positioned to break down how plaintiffs’ counsel build, prove, and recover on the fee-shifting case.

SESSION 1 – Building the Elder Exploitation Case | 2:30pm – 3:30pm

This session equips plaintiff-side attorneys with the statutory, evidentiary, and economic framework for building elder financial exploitation cases structured to recover mandatory attorney’s fees—but more importantly to help senior citizens who have often lost everything they carefully saved for retirement. Attendees will learn how to identify fee-shifting statutes in key jurisdictions, satisfy the preponderance standard, trigger burden-shifting presumptions, and assess case economics before filing. Attorneys leave with a replicable case-selection and pleading methodology.

BREAK | 3:30pm – 3:40pm

SESSION 2 – Holding the Banks, Facilities, and Fiduciaries That Enabled Elder Exploitation Accountable | 3:40pm – 4:40pm

This session teaches plaintiff-side attorneys how to build and prosecute civil claims against the third-party institutions and fiduciaries that enabled elder financial exploitation — including banks, nursing facilities, POA agents, trustees, and guardians. Attendees will learn how to plead actual knowledge against financial institutions (Federal court standard), navigate the December 2024 interagency regulatory standards, and stack statutory remedies including mandatory fee-shifting, double damages under California Probate Code § 859, and potential trebling under Civil Code § 3345. Attendees will also learn how the 9th Circuit has adopted a more restrictive reading of California’s Elder Abuse Law than state court trial judges and how that impacts case selection and pleading. By the end of this session, attorneys will be equipped to identify the strongest enabler-liability theory for a given fact pattern, anticipate defense removal and
preemption tactics, and structure multi-theory complaints that maximize both recovery and fee awards.