Summary Judgment Moves That Win the Motion—and Survive the Appeal

Tim Kowal, Certified Appellate Specialist and Founder | Kowal Law Group

Tim Kowal is the founder of Kowal Law Group and a Certified Appellate Specialist (State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization). His practice covers both trial and appellate litigation, from dispositive motions, evidentiary hearings, and trials through posttrial motions, writs, and appeals in state and federal courts. His trial and appellate wins total more than $60 million. Because he works on both sides of the trial–appeal divide, building the record in the trial court and then defending or attacking it on review, he is especially well positioned to show how a summary judgment motion should be built from the first filing so it wins in the trial court and holds up on appeal.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Kowal earned his J.D., cum laude, from Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Chapman Law Review, and his B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, Irvine. He is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of California, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Kowal is rated by Super Lawyers and holds a perfect 10.0 Avvo rating. As a law student, he won First Prize in the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Judicial Awareness Writing Competition. He co-hosts the California Appellate Law Podcast, which gives trial and appellate lawyers legal updates and practice tips, and writes regularly on appellate procedure for CEB DailyNews. He has authored roughly 50 articles, including pieces in California Litigation, Orange County Lawyer, the Chapman Law Review, and NALA’s Facts & Findings, and speaks often at accredited CLE programs, including myLawCLE, LawPracticeCLE, the Santa Cruz Bar Association, and the San Francisco Lawyers Network.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Kowal is a member of the Orange County Bar Association’s Appellate Law Section. He has served on the board of the Orange County Federalist Society since 2007 and as a Commissioner on the Orange County Human Relations Commission since 2012. From 2015 to 2017, he was an Adjunct Professor at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, where he taught Civil Procedure.

• Experience

Mr. Kowal’s litigation practice covers lender disputes, real estate development, easements and trespass, fraud and fraudulent transfers, fiduciary duty, trade secrets, unfair business practices, and complex business and financial disputes. He also has deep experience obtaining stays of judgment enforcement pending appeal. Representative results include a $40 million jury verdict in C&C Properties v. Shell Pipeline Co., ranked California’s #1 trespass verdict; a $10 million jury verdict in Yang v. Sui for fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and conversion; the appellate reversal of a $5.1 million promissory-note judgment in Shapiro v. Dohr; and a complete defense against $25 million in claims in Dohr v. Lintz. He brings a combined trial and appellate perspective to this program: preserving issues, framing undisputed facts, and securing rulings that survive appellate review.

Ryan McCarl, Co-Founder | Rushing McCarl LLP

Ryan McCarl is a co-founder of Rushing McCarl LLP in Santa Monica, California, where he handles complex business litigation, written advocacy, and motion practice at trial and on appeal. He is the author of Elegant Legal Writing (University of California Press, 2024), a book on persuasive brief writing praised by judges and practitioners. With multiple eight-figure jury verdicts, a federal appellate clerkship, and years of teaching advanced legal writing, he is well suited to explain how to write summary judgment papers that persuade the trial judge and keep the record sound for appeal.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. McCarl earned his J.D. with Honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was a member of the Chicago Journal of International Law. He also holds an M.A. in Education from the University of Michigan, and an M.A. in International Relations and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable David M. Ebel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He is admitted in California and the District of Columbia (inactive), before the U.S. Supreme Court, and before the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third, Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits, as well as several federal district and bankruptcy courts.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. McCarl is a sought-after speaker on legal writing and advocacy. He presented a plenary session on Elegant Legal Writing at the 2026 Appellate Judges Education Institute Summit and delivered the keynote at the Minnesota State Bar Association’s 2025 Appellate Practice Institute. He has trained lawyers at the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, the Texas Office of the Attorney General, and the ABA Litigation Section, and his amicus work has been cited by the Fifth Circuit. His scholarship has appeared in the Stanford Journal of International Law, the University of Cincinnati Law Review, the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, and an Oxford University Press volume on sovereign debt, and his work has been covered by the Daily Journal, Law.com, Forbes, the Los Angeles Times, and Law360.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. McCarl designed and taught Advanced Legal Writing at UCLA School of Law, where he was also an AI Law and Policy Research Fellow, and he has taught legal drafting at LMU Loyola Law School. He writes and speaks on the role of AI in legal practice, including “The Limits of Law and AI” (U. Cin. L. Rev., 2022) and “Uses and Abuses of AI in Legal Writing” (University of Oklahoma College of Law, 2026). He is a member of the American Bar Association and the Los Angeles County Bar Association.

• Experience

Before co-founding Rushing McCarl, Mr. McCarl was a litigator at WilmerHale and Hueston Hennigan. His trial results include a $17.8 million breach-of-contract jury verdict in Virgin Scent, Inc. v. BT Supplies W., Inc.; a $9.9 million partnership-dispute verdict in Delis v. Thorn; a $3.3 million verdict in Leyster v. Tran; and a defense verdict that defeated eight-figure RICO claims in Altaa v. Production Cap. He also won a Ninth Circuit reversal in Doe v. Compania Panameña de Aviación, serves as co-lead plaintiffs’ counsel in In re Stanley Tumbler Litigation, and represented the estate of Leonard Cohen in malpractice litigation. His trial-tested motion practice and appellate clerkship give attendees a practical framework for summary judgment briefing that wins and holds up on appeal.

SESSION 1 – Summary-Judgment Briefing and Motion Strategy in Federal Court | Ryan McCarl | 12:00pm – 1:00pm

This session gives trial attorneys a strategic framework for winning, and defeating, summary-judgment motions in federal court. Attorneys will learn when to file and when to wait, how to frame the dispositive issues so the court sees the case their way, and how to build a statement of undisputed facts that does the persuasive work. The session also covers how to structure the opposition brief, how to use the record and the standard of review, and where evidentiary objections under Rule 56(c)(2) fit into the larger plan. Attendees will leave with practical drafting techniques for writing summary-judgment briefs that are clear, credible, and persuasive, and that hold up on appeal.

BREAK | 1:00pm – 1:10pm

SESSION 2 – How Summary Judgments Are Won, Lost, and Rescued on Appeal | Tim Kowal | 1:10pm – 2:10pm

Summary judgment review is de novo, but de novo is not a fresh start. The court of appeals reviews the judgment, not the district court’s reasoning, and an appellee may defend the judgment on any ground the record supports. That rule can rescue a win or bury a loss, and the lesson runs both ways: prevailing parties should build and brief every alternative ground so the judgment stands on more than one leg, and losing parties must answer every ground raised in the motion, not just the one the court adopted. The session also covers the standard of review for evidence rulings, preservation after Dupree v. Younger, expert and sham-affidavit challenges under amended FRE 702, and harmless error. It targets litigators who brief and argue summary-judgment appeals and trial lawyers who want their wins to hold up.