LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 20, 2026--
Panish | Shea | Ravipudi LLP is pleased to announce that Ian Samson has been elevated to the position of partner, effective January 1, 2026. Mr. Samson has played a key role in many of the Firm’s most significant matters and focuses his practice on high-stakes personal injury and wrongful death litigation throughout California and Nevada.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260120025811/en/
“Ian’s promotion reflects his exceptional litigation skills, his dedication to our clients, and his meaningful contributions to the Firm’s continued success,” said Brian Panish, Founding Partner at Panish | Shea | Ravipudi LLP. “Ian is a fantastic lawyer which he has shown time and time again with the great results he has obtained for the Firm’s clients.”
Mr. Samson joined the Firm in January 2019 and serves as a lead attorney in its Nevada practice. He has secured hundreds of millions of dollars in recoveries for plaintiffs in California and Nevada, including: a $35 million products liability settlement for burn injuries; a $28.5 million settlement against Victor Elementary School District for a child catastrophically injured in a pedestrian accident; a $17.5 million settlement against Rebel Oil for a motorcyclist struck by a tanker truck; a $15.95 million settlement against a homeowners’ association for injuries caused by defective playground equipment; an $8 million jury verdict followed by a $10.5 million settlement for a special needs teacher served chemical cleaner instead of beer at a Clark County casino; and a $9 million settlement for a woman injured in a collision with a Garda armored truck. Mr. Samson currently serves on the team litigating PSR’s Social Media Cases (JCCP 5255) against Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Snap (Snapchat), Google (YouTube) and ByteDance (TikTok).
Prior to joining Panish | Shea | Ravipudi LLP, Mr. Samson represented investors in securities and consumer finance matters at a nationally regarded plaintiffs’ class action firm in San Francisco. He later moved to Los Angeles to join a nationally recognized complex litigation firm handling complex and class action matters as well as personal injury litigation.
Mr. Samson has been recognized as a 2025 Southern California Super Lawyers Rising Star® and a 2025 Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch in America honoree. He earned his J.D., cum laude, from the University of California, Hastings College of Law (now UC Law San Francisco) and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Washington. He is admitted to practice in California and Nevada, as well as several federal district courts.
ABOUT PANISH | SHEA | RAVIPUDI LLP
Panish | Shea | Ravipudi LLP is a nationally recognized law firm representing plaintiffs in wrongful death, catastrophic injury, sexual abuse/assault, product liability, mass torts, and business litigation cases. With offices in California, Nevada, and Arizona, Firm attorneys have dedicated themselves to obtaining justice for clients who are often dealing with a life-altering injury, death of a family member, or other challenges caused by the wrongful act of another. With this mission at the heart of its work, the Firm has obtained some of the most significant verdicts and settlements for plaintiffs in United States history.
Ian Samson, partner with Panish | Shea | Ravipudi LLP
YATZIV SETTLEMENT, West Bank (AP) — Celebratory music blasting from loudspeakers mixed with the sounds of construction, almost drowning out calls to prayer from a mosque in the Palestinian town across this West Bank valley.
Orthodox Jewish women in colorful head coverings, with babies on their hips, shared platters of fresh vegetables as soldiers encircled the hilltop, keeping guard.
The scene Monday reflected the culmination of Israeli settlers’ long campaign to turn this site, overlooking the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, into a settlement. Over the years, they fended off plans to build a hospital for Palestinian children on the land, always holding tight to the hope the land would one day become theirs.
That moment is now, they say.
After two decades of efforts, it took just a month for their new settlement, called “Yatziv,” to go from an unauthorized outpost of a few mobile homes to a fully recognized settlement. Fittingly, the new settlement's name means “stable” in Hebrew.
“We are standing stable here in Israel,” Finance Minister and settler leader Bezalel Smotrich told The Associated Press at Monday’s inauguration ceremony. “We’re going to be here forever. We will never establish a Palestinian state here.”
With leaders like Smotrich holding key positions in Israel’s government and establishing close ties with the Trump administration, settlers are feeling the wind at their backs.
Smotrich, who has been in charge of Israeli settlement policy for the past three years, has overseen an aggressive construction and expansion binge aimed at dismantling any remaining hopes of establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank.
While most of the world considers the settlements illegal, their impact on the ground is clear, with Palestinians saying the ever-expanding construction hems them in and makes it nearly impossible to establish a viable independent state. The Palestinians seek the West Bank, captured by Israel in 1967, as part of a future state.
Settlers had long set their sights on the hilltop, thanks to its position in a line of settlements surrounding Jerusalem and because they said it was significant to Jewish history. But they put up the boxy prefab homes in November because days earlier, Palestinian attackers had stabbed an Israeli to death at a nearby junction.
The attack created an impetus to justify the settlement, the local settlement council chair, Yaron Rosenthal, told AP. With the election of Israel’s far-right government in late 2022, Trump’s return to office last year and the November attack, conditions were ripe for settlers to make their move, Rosenthal said.
“We understood that there was an opportunity,” he said. “But we didn’t know it would happen so quickly.”
“Now there is the right political constellation for this to happen."
Smotrich announced approval of the outpost, along with 18 others, on Dec. 21. That capped 20 years of effort, said Nadia Matar, a settler activist.
“Shdema was nearly lost to us,” said Matar, using the name of an Israeli military base at the site. “What prevented that outcome was perseverance.”
Back in 2006, settlers were infuriated upon hearing that Israel's government was in talks with the U.S. to build a Palestinian children's hospital on the land, said Hagit Ofran, a director at Peace Now, an anti-settlement watchdog group, especially as the U.S. Agency for International Development was funding a “peace park” at the base of the hill.
The mayor of Beit Sahour urged the U.S. Consulate to pressure Israel to begin hospital construction, while settlers began weekly demonstrations at the site calling on Israel to quash the project, according to consulate files obtained through WikiLeaks.
It was “interesting” that settlers had “no religious, legal, or ... security claim to that land,” wrote consulate staffer Matt Fuller at the time, in an email he shared with the AP. "They just don’t want the Palestinians to have it — and for a hospital no less — a hospital that would mean fewer permits for entry to Jerusalem for treatment.”
The hospital was never built. The site was converted into a military base after the Netanyahu government came to power in 2009. From there, settlers quickly established a foothold by creating makeshift cultural center at the site, putting on lectures, readings and exhibits
Speaking to the AP, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister at the time the hospital was under discussion, said that was the tipping point.
“Once it is military installation, it is easier than to change its status into a new outpost, a new settlement and so on,” he said.
Olmert said Netanyahu — who has served as prime minister nearly uninterrupted since then — was “committed to entirely different political directions from the ones that I had,” he said. “They didn’t think about cooperation with the Palestinians.”
The continued legalization of settlements and spiking settler violence — which rose by 27% in 2025, according to Israel’s military — have cemented a fearful status quo for West Bank Palestinians.
The land now home to Yatziv was originally owned by Palestinians from Beit Sahour, said the town’s mayor, Elias Isseid.
“These lands have been owned by families from Beit Sahour since ancient times,” he said.
Isseid worries more land loss is to come. Yatziv is the latest in a line of Israeli settlements to pop up around Beit Sahour, all of which are connected by a main highway that runs to Jerusalem without entering Palestinian villages. The new settlement “poses a great danger to our children, our families," he said.
A bypass road, complete with a new yellow gate, climbs up to Yatziv. The peace park stands empty.
Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich watches Rabbi Amiel Sternberg affix a mezuzah in the newly-legalized Jewish settlement, Yatziv, adjacent to the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, in the West Bank, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Settlers attend the inauguration ceremony for a newly-legalized Jewish settlement, Yatziv, adjacent to the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, in the West Bank, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
An Israeli soldier stands guard during the inauguration ceremony for the newly legalized Jewish settlement of Yatziv, near the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, in the West Bank, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Settlers attend an inauguration ceremony for a newly-legalized Jewish settlement, Yatziv, adjacent to the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, in the West Bank, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Caravans are placed in a newly-legalized Jewish settlement of Yatziv, adjacent to the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, in the West Bank, Jan. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
