Personalities With Principles: Joe Cotchett

Once a year, St. Anthony staff reflect on members of our community — our own little community and the Bay Area at large — who have gone the extra mile for low-income and homeless people. Then we invite them to receive a St. Anthony Foundation Award. This gives us a chance to acknowledge, honor, and thank these people and organizations. It gives them a chance to introduce their friends and associates to St. Anthony’s and the neighborhood. In 2010, the Fr. Alfred Boeddeker Award was given to Joseph Cotchett, an attorney. Here is a look at one of the many who have made a personal and significant difference at St. Anthony’s.

Scripture admonishes us not to “side with the strong against the weak.” Joseph W. Cotchett has spent a lifetime siding with the weak in the face of power. As a college student, he defied segregation on campus. He has represented low-income people, professional people, policy holders, homeowners, non-profit organizations, unions and the public, as well as banks, business people, corporations, and shareholders, in class action suits. His issues include consumer fraud, elder abuse, environmental and toxic discrimination issues, antitrust issues, First Amendment rights, product liability, and wage and hour law. He has been honored for his work with disability rights. He represents the disadvantaged in extensive pro bono work, including environmental and public policy matters; his firm represents and advises several Native American groups.

Joe Cotchett is considered one of the best trial strategists in the state, known for representing the underdog against powerful interests. He served as trial counsel for Consumers Union, successfully defending the watchdog consumer group in a product disparagement and defamation suit, for which he was honored by Trial Lawyers for Public Justice for his “outstanding contribution to the public interest.”

In addition to all that, he writes. Mr. Cotchett is the author of numerous articles and books about the law, including The Ethics Gap, and a contributing author to numerous magazines. He co-authored The Coast Time Forgot, a historic guide to the San Mateo County coast.

Fr. Alfred Boeddeker also advocated for the poor, as well as providing for their immediate needs. He dreamed not only of helping low-income people change their lives, but also of changing the world in which they were trying to live, a world in which all could flourish. Joe Cotchett has fought the same good fight.