Our Team
We bring together the foremost real estate disaster litigators and experts.
Steven A. Blum
Partner｜Yale Law School
Steven A. Blum is a pre-eminent California real estate litigator. He once represented Edison in some of its largest litigation but has more recently taken up arms against the giant utility. For decades he has sued and beaten the City of Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (DWP) in trials. His clients have included many other attorneys, judges, environmental groups, and Fortune 500 corporations. Steve graduated from UCLA (summa cum laude) in 1984 and Yale Law School in 1987. Before starting Blum & Ho, he was a litigator at two of California’s top law firms (Irell & Manella and Heller Ehrman) routinely representing the largest and most sophisticated corporate clients in their real estate and business cases. Now he works for private homeowners. He has litigated complex matters like the Thomas Fire (including the Montecito debris flows, which he personally experienced), the Woolsey Fire (Malibu and Agoura) as well as real estate disasters like landslides throughout California, and he is now representing homeowners in the 2025 Altadena, Pacific Palisades, and Malibu fires. Steve has had over 35 years’ experience in the obscure and specialized field of inverse condemnation, which is the leading legal theory used against public utilities like Edison and government agencies like DWP. He has also served as adjunct law professor teaching inverse condemnation and eminent domain at Loyola Law School.
Gary Ho
Partner｜UC Berkeley School of Law
Mr. Ho has been a litigator for over 20 years and is a graduate of the UC Berkeley School of Law. He practiced at the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, where he defended some of the largest business, real estate, and mass tort cases in the country. As a partner of Blum & Ho, LLP, Mr. Ho has represented many clients whose properties have been damaged as the result of landslides and floods. He has taken numerous landslide cases to trial against government agencies and other defendants. Mr. Ho has also successfully represented victims of the Woolsey Fire in cases against Southern California Edison.
Ilana Lohr-Schmidt
Attorney｜NYU School of Law
Ilana is an environmental litigator who has been actively investigating the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire. She is a J.D. graduate of New York University School of Law and holds a B.S. in geological and environmental sciences from Stanford University. Ilana has litigated under state and federal cleanup statutes and coordinated remediation of legacy environmental contamination under local, state, and federal oversight. Earlier she worked at Mental Health Advocacy Services, where her practice focused on fair housing and health consumer issues, and at Levy Konigsberg LLP, where she represented plaintiffs in the Flint Water Crisis litigation and other mass tort cases. Ilana is licensed to practice law in California, New York, and New Jersey.
Michael R. Hambly
Attorney｜Harvard Law School
Michael Hambly has handled cases (including trials and appeals) in state and federal courts for over 35 years. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He has experience in many types of litigation including in these areas: real estate, mass tort, class action, trademarks, copyright, entertainment, and trade secrets. He has practiced in the firms of Irell & Manella, LLP, and Christensen, White, Miller, Fink & Jacobs (now Glaser Weil).
Vashon Simien
Attorney｜USC Gould School of Law
Vashon Simien is a graduate of the USC Gould School of Law. He earned his undergraduate degree in Linguistics from UCLA. He has experience in all facets of litigation, from pretrial through appeal. Combining more than a decade of experience as a litigator with deep knowledge of e-discovery issues in a litigation setting, Mr. Simien has provided domestic and international clients with practical discovery solutions and effective trial strategies in mass tort and other aggregate litigation cases.
August Simien, Jr.
Fire Consultant
As a Los Angeles Fire Suppression Captain, Mr. Simien, Jr. is responsible for leading a team of firefighters at emergency scenes, overseeing fire suppression operations, managing the handling of hazardous materials, determining the causes of fires, making critical decisions on the scene, ensuring the safety of their crew and the public, managing station operations, conducting training drills, and enforcing fire codes within their jurisdiction, all while maintaining a high level of physical fitness and readiness to respond to various emergency situations; essentially acting as the on-scene commander during fire incidents and managing the day-to-day operations of a fire station within the LA Fire Department
Mr. Simien, Jr. was an instructor at the department training tower and taught new recruits and fireman. He tought wildfire suppression and tactical response and participated in Los Angeles response and disaster preparation drills with multiple agencies.