John Scheerer focuses his practice exclusively on trusts, estates and conservatorship litigation. He has successfully handled a variety of matters before the Probate Department of the Superior Court as well as appeals in the California Court of Appeal resulting in multiple successful appellate decisions.

Mr. Scheerer represents beneficiaries, trustees, professional fiduciaries, and non-profit institutions such as national universities. He balances clever advocacy with an unbiased and realistic assessment of each of his client’s cases in order to provide the most cost-effective favorable outcome.

Representative examples of Mr. Scheerer’s practice include prosecuting and defending will and trust contests, defending creditor’s claims in decedents’ trusts or estates, defending conservatorship proceedings, and prosecuting and defending breach of fiduciary duty and surcharge claims against trustees.

Most recently, Mr. Scheerer was successful in achieving the following results for clients:

• Successfully defended a multibillion-dollar claim against the Barron Hilton Trust.
• Obtained terminating sanctions in addition to demurrers sustained without leave to amend against a disgruntled relative of his client, a trustee of a trust holding substantial assets.
• Obtained a dismissal in subsequent related conservatorship litigation.
• Obtained an affirmance in favor of his clients, both trustee and beneficiaries of a trust, after an extensive appellate process, which included Mr. Scheerer’s oral advocacy in the California Court of Appeal.

Arevik Stepanyan obtained her J.D. in 2015 from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif. She received her B.A. degree in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, summa cum laude.

Prior to joining Sacks, Glazier, Franklin, Lodise, McMurtrey & Scheerer, LLP, Arevik was an attorney at a major entertainment company, where she handled all business and legal matters pertaining to the development and production of scripted television shows, and a litigation associate with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, where her practice largely focused on antitrust and employment matters. Before joining Gibson Dunn, Arevik served as a law clerk to the Honorable Jeffrey T. Miller of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. Arevik is fluent in Armenian and Russian.