
Karen K. Peabody is a litigator and appellate attorney who has been practicing in Santa Barbara since 1997. Since joining Hollister and Brace in 2019, she has practiced in the areas of Probate and Trust Litigation, Estate Planning, Family Law, and Civil Litigation. At Hollister and Brace, Karen has handled a number of trust litigation matters and probate proceedings and has represented or assisted in representing clients in resolving family law matters. Karen is dedicated to providing legal services to clients in a cost-effective manner and working creatively and efficiently to resolve disputes.
Prior to joining Hollister and Brace, Karen had a solo practice, Peabody Boris Law, emphasizing Probate and Trust Litigation and Estate Planning. Prior to that, Karen was a partner in her former law firm, Nye, Peabody, Stirling, Hale & Miller, LLP (formerly Carrington & Nye), where her practice focused on civil litigation and appellate work in both state and federal courts. From 1997 through 2013, when she retired from the firm, Karen specialized in counselling and defending public entity clients in matters involving a wide variety of legal issues including employment law, civil rights, government tort liability, constitutional law, qualified immunity, administrative law and mandamus, criminal law, retirement and pension law, academic freedom, privacy rights, and state sovereignty at the trial and appellate levels. She was a member of the University of California Defense Panel in the Employment and General Practice areas and handled or played a significant role in handling more than seventy-five cases as outside counsel for the Regents of the University of California and its campuses and employees. Karen also represented the County of Santa Barbara, the City of Simi Valley (primarily the Simi Valley Police Department) and the City of Lompoc in litigation involving civil rights and employment law. In many of these cases, Karen first obtained dismissal or summary judgment on behalf of her public entity clients at the trial court level and then successfully represented the clients at the appellate court level resulting in the judgment being upheld. In one case, Mena v. City of Simi Valley, a civil rights action, Karen represented the City of Simi Valley and several Simi Valley police officers at the District Court level (with her former partner, David Nye), on appeal before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal and (with co-appellate counsel from Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood, LLP) before the United States Supreme Court, resulting in a number of published opinions. The remainder of her practice involved working collaboratively on large and complex plaintiff’s cases in areas such as employment discrimination and clergy sexual abuse. After retiring from her firm at the end of 2013, Karen served as a workplace investigator for the University of California Santa Barbara campus, investigating employee complaints pursuant to California Whistleblower and Whistleblower Retaliation law and University of California policy. Prior to practicing in California, Karen practiced civil litigation with a law firm in Michigan and wrote legal annotations for American Law Reports.