Dreher Law Firm - San Diego Attorney Robert Scott Dreher

We do not represent large corporations, insurance companies, the government, or the powerful. We are trial lawyers who represent people in cases involving financial fraud, investment scams, securities fraud, stockbroker negligence, civil rights violations, business and contract disputes, insurance claims, and wage-and-hour violations. We handle individual claims, small groups, and class actions.

Our office is located in downtown San Diego. Please click for directions

Robert Scott Dreher left Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach with another lawyer, John W. Jeffrey, in 1996, to open a boutique trial practice. Mr. Jeffrey retired in 2002 and the firm is now known as Dreher Law Firm. Mr. Dreher has been practicing law since 1985. Matthew Miller joined the firm in 1997 after a career as a college baseball pitcher.

In the Spring of 1996 the firm was co-lead counsel in securing a $14,100,000 jury verdict (including $4.7 million in punitive damages) in a consumer fraud class-action case against Florida financier and book author Charles J. Givens (Gutierrez v. Givens, et al., San Diego Sup. Ct. No. 667169). This verdict was the largest of its kind in California and was reported in many major metropolitan newspapers and publications across the country, including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun, Los Angeles Times, San Jose Mercury News, Forbes Magazine, and Fortune.

In 2003 the firm was co-lead counsel in Diltz v. Macy’s, Inc. (LASC NO. BC 255944), a wage-and-hour class-action case on behalf of more than 3,500 employees who were improperly classified as "exempt" from overtime laws. The case settled for over $10 million after nearly 15 months of litigation and discovery, including the comprehensive review and cataloguing of more than 600,000 pages of documents.

Later that same year the firm extracted a $2 million dollar settlement in a securities fraud lawsuit they brought against a large Los Angeles law firm and its client, on behalf of 12 investors who were victims of an offshore Prime-Bank Ponzi Scheme (Forslund v. Rein, 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16832 (Sept. 8, 2003)).

In November 2004 the firm teamed-up with another local law firm and the SDVLP, to bring a first-of-its-kind Federal class-action lawsuit against the City of San Diego and the San Diego Police Department, charging that the city and its police officers are issuing "sleeping tickets" to homeless people in violation of the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In 1997, the firm was co-lead counsel for the Plaintiff class in a nationwide investment fraud class-action involving the fraudulent sale of oil and gas investments (Allard v. American Business Securities, et al., San Diego Superior Court No. 701638), in which they secured a $13.34 million dollar judgment. They were also co-lead counsel for nationwide classes of plaintiff shareholders in In Re: MP3.COM Securities Litigation (So. Dist. Cal. Case No.00 CV 1958-BTM); In Re: Burnham Pacific Securities Litigation (San Diego Superior Court Case No. GIC743017); and Klein v. Southwest Gas, Inc., (99cv1891-L (JAH)), in which they helped achieve multi-million dollar settlements on behalf of their clients. In Kennedy, et al. v. Dividend Development Corp. (SDSC No. 693162), a construction-defect and personal injury lawsuit, they teamed with another small firm to represent more than 150 minor and adult plaintiffs in achieving a settlement of $4.2 million, and in Ames, et al. v. Rancon Development, et al. (SDSC No. 705822) they achieved a similar settlement of $1.3 million.

In the summer of 2004, in Castillo v. Prudential Securities, they won an arbitration award valued at more than $300,000 for an investor, after proving that the big brokerage firm had falsified its trading confirmation slips and made unsuitable stock purchase recommendations.

Mr. Dreher and Mr. Miller are members and sponsors of the San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program, which provides pro bono legal services to indigent and homeless people. In 2002 the firm successfully negotiated a dramatic change in the enforcement of the City of San Diego's zoning laws against the homeless, in which they convinced the City to allow several hundred churches to regularly feed and clothe and shelter homeless people on Church property (Religious Land Use & Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (42 USC §2000cc)), and have assisted other church groups in Temecula and San Jose do likewise. And in 2003 the firm successfully represented St. Albans Episcopal Church in its lawsuit seeking to force the City of El Cajon to adopt comprehensive emergency winter shelter provisions in its municipal code.

They also represented and assisted Father Joe Carroll and St. Vincent De Paul in negotiations with the City of San Diego and the Navy under the purview of No. 100-77, 100 Stat. 482 (as amended Title X of the Base Closure Community Redevelopment and Homeless Assistance Act of 1994, Pub.L. 103-421, 108 State. 4346, §2687) enabling a coalition of homeless providers to receive property and benefits for the provision of homeless and transitional housing totaling $7.5 million.

Over the past 10 years the firm has devoted over 400 hours annually in pro bono legal services to homeless and indigent people