Gabriel L. Cohan

Gabriel Cohan is an attorney licensed to practice law in the State of California, admitted to practice before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. District Courts for the Southern District of California, the Central District of California, the Eastern District of California, the Northern District of California, and the U.S. Tax Court. Gabriel practices law with Todd Burns in the partnership, Burns & Cohan, and also works for his father's firm, William A. Cohan, P.C. Gabriel practices primarily federal complex litigation, both civil and criminal, as well as handling other complex white-collar administrative or agency proceedings, including tax controversy work. Over the past fourteen (14) years, civil rights work has constituted a substantial part of Gabriel's practice -- at times as much as approximately one-third. Burns & Cohan has achieved significant victories for several clients in civil rights cases as further described below. Gabriel has assisted counsel at trial or been second chair at trial in approximately twenty (20) federal trials.

For the first three years of his career, Gabriel worked for Federal Defenders of San Diego, Inc. ("FDSDI") as a trial attorney and as a research attorney. In or about June of 2006, Gabriel was hired as a contractor by FDSDI to assist Mr. Burns, who was then a trial attorney and Trial Team Supervisor, to manage and review voluminous electronic discovery (millions of pages) in U.S. v. Saathoff, et al., Case No. 06-cr-0043 (CASD) on behalf of Mr. Burns' client Cathy Lexin, whom Gabriel eventually represented as co-counsel after law school. See also United States v. Saathoff, 708 F.Supp.2d 1020 (S.D. Cal. 2010). In addition to these cases, while Gabriel was working at FSDSI, Gabriel assisted Mr. Burns with defending several other significant federal criminal cases, including United States v. Vela, 624 F.3d 1138 (9th Cir. 2010); United States v. Chi Tong Kuok, 671 F.3d 931 (9th Cir. 2012); United States V. McGill, 718 F.Supp.2d 1240 (S.D. Cal. 2010), Gabriel left FDSDI in May 2011 to join his father in his law practice and also because his mentor and former supervisor, Todd Burns, was leaving FDSDI and asked Gabriel to join him as his law partner.

From September 2011 through approximately December 2014, Burns & Cohan represented Troy Dugan in his civil rights case concerning unlawful arrest, wrongful detention claims, and excessive force claims through a trial yielding a $1,000, 000 jury verdict. See Troy J. Dugan v. Christopher Nance, et al., Central District California No. 2:11-cv-8145 CAS(SHx).

From 2015 through approximately December 2018, Burns & Cohan represented Alma Godinez through two trials in another successful civil rights matter resulting in a $2.5 million settlement with the County of San Diego. See Alma Godinez v. Jorge Maleno Huerta, Southern District of California Case No. 3:16-cv-0236 BAS (NLS).

On June 18, 2021, Gabriel was awarded $269,466.00 in attorney's fees for prevailing in a civil rights case against the law enforcement officials in San Diego and Arkansas in Soler v. County of San Diego, et al., Case No. 14-cv-2470-MMA (RBB) at Docket No. 241 ("6/18/21 Order").

Gabriel graduated from the California Western School of Law ("CWSL") in 2008, cum laude (i.e. top 10% of his class). While attending CWSL part-time, Gabriel worked full-time as a contract trial presentation tech, paralegal, investigator, and law clerk for FDSDI. In 2002, Gabriel received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara in economics and business. Gabriel also studied statistics and economic modeling in the visiting students' program at Columbia University.