Bruce Tichinin
Law Office Of Bruce Tichinin
Before becoming an attorney, Bruce Tichinin attended the University of California at Berkeley, where he received academic recognition by being awarded Honors at Entrance and by graduating on the Dean’s List, both of which placed him in the top 15% of students. He was on the Boxing Team, was elected President of the “Ridge Project,” the first co-ed living group on the campus, and was inducted as a senior into the invitation-only Order of the Golden Bear, a campus leadership society. He was accepted to the University of California at Berkeley Law School (known also as Boalt Hall), where he graduated with a Juris Doctor degree, and then passed the California Bar Exam. In 40 years of practice, Mr. Tichinin has established a respected reputation among his attorney peers and in the community as a precedent-setting litigator in the fields of land-use and real property law. In Heninger v. Dunn, Mr. Tichinin won a California Court of Appeal decision that required trees wrongly damaged or destroyed to be paid for at the cost to replace them with comparably sized trees, rather than at firewood value. When the case went to trial again after the appeal, the initial verdict for the client of $0 was increased to $191,000. The case spawned “tree law” as a field of practice for California attorneys. In Save El Toro Association v. Days, Mr. Tichinin won another Court of Appeal case that held for the first time that California cities and counties had to comply with the law that required them to adopt General Plans for the orderly and intelligent development of the lands under their jurisdiction, including preservation of open space. The Court reversed a City Council decision permitting development of El Toro, the landmark peak of Morgan Hill, which is now permanently preserved as open space owned by the City, under easements - drafted by Mr. Tichinin - that prohibit all development.