![\"Irish](\"https:\/\/www.aitkenlaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Irish-Legal-100-2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
On October 30th, Wylie flew out to Washington D.C. to receive the high honor of being a part of the Irish Legal 100, a list comprised\u00a0of the most accomplished and distinguished lawyers of Irish descent in the nation. Below is the article written about Wylie’s foundations and beliefs and how his heritage helped form them.<\/p>\n
‘AITKEN TAKES THE STAGE’<\/strong> California attorney Wylie Aitken has a passion for justice, politics\u00a0and the arts. He speaks to Debbie McGoldrick about how\u00a0he\u2019s managed to incorporate all three into a thriving career.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0Wylie with the Irish Ambassador<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n WYLIE <\/em>Aitken, one of the most celebrated attorneys in California thanks to his numerous court victories on behalf of clients who have suffered great harm, always harbored dreams of entering the legal field.<\/p>\n What he really desired, he confesses, was fame as an actor.\u00a0 Aitken had a passion for the stage throughout his youth, and would have liked nothing better than to be a big star.<\/p>\n But making it big in Hollywood is no easy feat, he eventually realized.\u00a0 And it is not a stretch to say that some of the acting skills he acquired back in the day have served him quite well in his legal career.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought I was going to be the next great Irish American actor,\u201d Aitken recalled during an interview with the Irish Legal 100.<\/p>\n \u201cI was in drama all through high school and college.\u00a0 But I saw my friends going off to attempt to make a living as actors and realized it wasn\u2019t all that easy.\u201d<\/p>\n So law school beckoned \u2013 he earned a JD from Marquette University in 1965 \u2013 and Aitken has never looked back.\u00a0 His personal injury firm in Orange County\u2019s Santa Ana, Aitken * Aitken * Cohn, has earned a national reputation throughout the decades not only for achieving justice for its clients \u2013 some of his court victories have been record-setting \u2013 but also impacting change in the law.<\/p>\n \u201cI appreciate what the legal system is able to accomplish,\u201d says Aitken, whose maternal grandparents emigrated from Co. Cork in the 1850s.\u00a0 \u201cAs lawyers, we have the opportunity to represent the afflicted and I think we can also afflict the comfortable too, which is a great Irish tradition.\u00a0 Law is a natural place to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n AITKEN\u2019S<\/span> <\/em>firm, which he founded in 1978, specializes in an array of areas such as personal injury, truck and motorcycle accidents, wrongful death, medical malpractice and business litigation. \u00a0His three children, Christopher, Darren and Ashleigh, are also members of the practice \u201cAnd they\u2019re married to three attorneys as well,\u201d Aitken says.<\/p>\n Aitken\u2019s cases are often catastrophic \u2013 children maimed, people killed in horrific accidents \u2013 but he has learned to keep the emotional aspects of the job in check.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very enriching to be able to take a disaster and see that at least those left behind are taken care of,\u201d Aitken says.<\/p>\n \u201cThe most significant aspect is the stress of responsibility.\u00a0 What happens if we lose? You try as hard as you can.\u00a0 When you\u2019re looking at someone who\u2019s already suffered a serious tragedy, you don\u2019t want to see them experience another tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n Aitken\u2019s firm has accumulated several notable court victories, including a groundbreaking one which prompted changes in California law with regard to safety at amusement parks.<\/p>\n On Christmas Eve 1998, a huge piece of metal broke off the popular Columbia sailing ship ride at Disneyland in Anaheim, striking and killing a man and seriously injuring his wife as their five year old child looked on.\u00a0 Aitken represented the family and won a multi-million dollar settlement for them.\u00a0 California also tightened regulations at its many theme parks as a result of what happened to the family.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Disneyland people allowed the Columbia ride to deteriorate,\u201d Aitken said.<\/p>\n \u201cFollowing Walt Disney\u2019s death, they were using the park more for profit and not having the same standards that Walt set up.\u00a0 This poor family\u2019s life was turned upside down.\u00a0 The husband came all the way from Vietnam and worked for Microsoft in Seattle.\u00a0 It was devastating.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd what really made a difference in that case is that there was no regulation whatsoever of private parks in California, and now there is as a special law passed after that case. That\u2019s exactly what we tried to do and what we should be doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Another case that Aitken considers a significant turning point in his career came in 1986, when a five-year-old girl was nearly mauled to death by a mountain lion in a wilderness park, suffering severe head injuries and paralysis as a result.<\/p>\n Aitken sued Orange County, claiming that officials were warned about the dangers of lurking mountain lions, and after a lengthy trial which received national media attention the case was settled in the young girl\u2019s favor.\u00a0 The compensation helped her and her parents re-claim their lives, and she eventually put herself through college.<\/p>\n \u201cThe case was very challenging, putting it mildly,\u201d Aitken recalls.<\/p>\n \u201cBut the work we did shows how important it is to be a trial lawyer, and why I run to work and enjoy what I do every day.\u00a0 It\u2019s all about making a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n AITKEN\u2019S<\/span> <\/em>success as an attorney has allowed him to pursue a particular interest that he developed at an early age thanks to his family background \u2013 Democratic politics.<\/p>\n His father worked with Boeing and the family moved from Aitken\u2019s birthplace, Detroit, Michigan to various cities for the job, eventually settling in California in 1955.<\/p>\n \u201cMy parents were very strong New Deal Democrats.\u00a0 They went through the Depression and they were just passionate Roosevelt Democrats,\u201d Aitken recalled.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was our tradition, and I probably would have been excommunicated from the family if I hadn\u2019t followed through.\u201d<\/p>\n The ascension of John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert sealed the deal for Aitken, who worked on Bobby\u2019s presidential campaign. \u00a0Aitken and his wife Bette were present on the dreadful night when Bobby was assassinated in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in 1968.<\/p>\n \u201cSuddenly you could hear what sounded like pop guns and nobody quite knew what had happened at first,\u201d Aitken remembers.<\/p>\n \u201cI grabbed my wife \u2026 we were getting all kinds of contrary reports as to what really happened a few feet away in the kitchen.\u00a0 We got outside the room where everyone had assembled, and along comes the LA Police Department. They have Sirhan Sirhan in tow, but we didn\u2019t know at the time why this young gentleman was taken through the hallway.\u201d<\/p>\n The murder devastated the nation and Aitken was badly shaken by the turn of events, so much so that he stepped away from politics for several years. \u00a0Bobby Kennedy had it all, he felt, and the sense of loss was overwhelming.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was so incredibly spiritual in a very tough way. You could not spend any time around him without getting the feeling of how clearly this person was influenced by helping people who didn\u2019t have all the advantages he had in his lifetime,\u201d Aitken says.<\/p>\n \u201cYou got the sense that this was a person who so truly and deeply cared. I thought he was the whole package. He had the charm and humor of his brother and the deepness of his commitment, and to see it all go up, and to be there about 15 feet within the podium … it was just so disheartening, so depressing.\u201d<\/p>\n Aitken\u2019s return to politics came during the presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter in 1976, and he has stayed active ever since as a top fundraiser for both local and national candidates. \u00a0\u00a0Hillary Clinton, he believes, will definitely run for the White House in 2016, but he cautions against the air of inevitability surrounding her candidacy.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve met her and I\u2019ve met Bill. I\u2019m not, quote unquote, a Clinton insider, but those I know who are perceived as insiders seem pretty convinced that she\u2019s going to be running,\u201d Aitken says.<\/p>\n \u201cI would support her candidacy, but I always want to know who else is running. It would be interesting to see if someone dramatically enters the race.\u00a0 As a very good friend of Senator Dianne Feinstein, we both definitely want that glass ceiling for women to be shattered once and for all.\u201d<\/p>\n A particular point of pride for Aitken, given his life-long love of theater, is his chairmanship of the California Arts Council.\u00a0 He was first appointed to the post by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in March of 2010, and re-appointed the following year by Governor Jerry Brown. The council seeks to advance California\u2019s interests through the arts and creativity, which Aitken considers vitally important.<\/p>\n \u201cI love all the arts given what they can do for people, especially young people,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cThe entertainment value is terrific for sure, but in reality the arts can help kids in so many ways while they are in school.\u00a0 The biggest faux pas in California was when we let the arts go out of the public school system. It\u2019s probably the worst public policy decision we\u2019ve ever made.<\/p>\n \u201cNow we are trying to turn that around and get the arts back in schools again. This will help with drop-out rates and help to improve grades, which has been shown time and again.\u201d<\/p>\n A few years ago, Aitken and his wife Bette (\u201cabsolutely the smartest person I know, and she\u2019s not a lawyer,\u201d Aitken laughed), made a substantial donation back to Chapman University\u2019s Fowler School of Law in Orange County to establish the Bette and Wylie Aitken Family Violence Clinic, which offers assistance to survivors of domestic violence.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a particular passion my wife and I have,\u201d Aitken says.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s important not only to help wives and mothers break the cycle of violence, but also the children who are scarred from it. We want to be a substantial part of helping to take care of them and give them an opportunity to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n IRELAND<\/span><\/em>, Aitken believes, is not just a place, but a dream.<\/p>\n \u201cOur cleverness, our sense of humor, is unsurpassed. It\u2019s what helps us succeed in life,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Aitken has traveled to Ireland on several occasions.\u00a0 His first trip taught him exactly why Ireland has so many shades of green.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was raining all the time,\u201d he recalls with a laugh.\u00a0 \u201cBut so beautiful.\u201d \u201cI thought we needed to duplicate that in Orange County, which is actually the seventh largest metropolitan community in America,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are a lot of Irish lawyers out here, and I think I\u2019ve met most all of them all,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re a very active group, and we\u2019ve brought something really unique to the Orange County legal community.\u201d<\/p>\n Ireland, unlike England, maintains a jury system for civil cases, which Aitken applauds as being a much fairer way of administering justice. \u00a0But unlike the U.S., Irish lawyers, or barristers, do not have the opportunity to question potential jurors for possible conflicts or biases.<\/p>\n \u201cI was watching a trial in the Four Courts in Dublin once, and I asked the barrister why he didn\u2019t get a chance to question the jurors on whether or not they worked for insurance companies, claims adjustors or other things like that,\u201d Aitken recalled.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the barrister told me it\u2019s not in their system to do that. \u2018I\u2019ll put it to you this way,\u2019 he said.\u00a0 \u2018I\u2019ve won some cases I never should have won, and lost some that I should have won, so it all works out in the end.\u2019\u00a0 So I took that message back to California with me.<\/p>\n \u201cWorking out in the end is no consolation for an injured party.\u00a0 Thankfully, the U.S. system of justice helps prevent such injustices.\u201d<\/p>\n Wylie Aitken, whether being referenced as an activist, philanthropist, or advocate, certainly has the track record to prove he fights for those suffering harm \u2013 with juries usually in anonymous agreement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On October 30th, Wylie flew out to Washington D.C. to receive the high honor of being a part of the Irish Legal 100, a list comprised\u00a0of the most accomplished and distinguished lawyers of Irish descent in the nation. Below is the article written about Wylie’s foundations and beliefs and how his heritage helped form them…. read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3902,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10,12,24],"tags":[38,69,72,95,413,446,846],"class_list":["post-3912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-awards","category-blog","category-news","tag-38","tag-aitken","tag-aitken-takes-the-stage","tag-article","tag-irish","tag-legal","tag-wylie"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aitkenlaw.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aitkenlaw.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aitkenlaw.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aitkenlaw.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aitkenlaw.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aitkenlaw.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aitkenlaw.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aitkenlaw.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aitkenlaw.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aitkenlaw.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Wylie](\"https:\/\/www.aitkenlaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Irish-Ambassador-300x225.jpg\")
\nOrange County has a thriving Celtic Bar Association, thanks to Aitken\u2019s foresight.\u00a0 He was acquainted with a number of Irish bar associations throughout the country and found them valuable networks from a business and personal standpoint.<\/p>\n
\nThe Celtic Bar Association came into being in 2000, and Aitken\u2019s son, Darren, was among those suggesting that it should be broadened to include all the Celtic nations.\u00a0 The group meets once a month in an Irish pub and Aitken says it has been a great success.<\/p>\n