J.D., Tulane University Law School (2012)
B.A., University of California, Berkeley (2006)
State Bar of California (State Bar Number 289328)
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Charles's practice areas include tenants' rights, eviction defense, affirmative lawsuits on behalf of tenants, personal injury, and general civil litigation. Charles also engages in numerous pro bono activities and cases throughout the Bay Area.
Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Charles graduated magna cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with B.A.s in English Literature and Rhetoric. At U.C. Berkeley, he received the Cal Bears Scholarship (full tuition) and the H.W. Hill Scholarship (a faculty-selected award for work in the English Department of exceptionally high caliber). Upon graduation, Charles was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society.
Charles received his J.D. from Tulane University Law School in New Orleans, Louisiana. During law school, Charles interned for Orleans Public Defenders in New Orleans, Louisiana; served as a certified student attorney at the Office of the Federal Public Defender in the Eastern District of California in Sacramento, California; externed in his third year of law school for the (now late) Honorable Helen G. Berrigan in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana; studied constitutional and socialist society law of the People’s Republic of China at Tsinghua University in Beijing and Fudan University in Shanghai; and served as managing editor for, and published in, the Tulane Journal of International and Comparative Law.
After graduating law school in 2012, Charles returned home to the Bay Area and worked for an international grantmaking nonprofit organization in San Francisco. There, he advised staff on the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and educated corporate clients on the charity laws of India, China, and Hong Kong. Afterwards, Charles founded Ostertag Law Office in 2014.
Some of Charles’s case successes include the following:
Obtained settlement on the eve of trial for a family of six – two adults and four minor children — for uninhabitable conditions and retaliatory eviction from a rental property in Oakland; the landlords attempted to evict the plaintiffs after they requested repairs with the eviction notice stating the property would be “turned into a museum” for the landlords’ religious leader
Won summary judgement for a Berkeley tenant on the affirmative defense of waiver after the landlords attempted to evict the tenant multiple times on false and immaterial violations of the City of Berkeley’s Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance
Obtained settlement for a plaintiff at a high-crime apartment complex in Sacramento after unknown assailants shot up an adjacent apartment and a stray bullet hit plaintiff in the leg while he was sleeping next door
Obtained settlement in a complex-designated case for twelve plaintiffs living in uninhabitable conditions and experiencing systematic harassment by management at an apartment complex in Walnut Creek
Reduced an attorney’s fee award against a homeless and indigent litigant by 90 percent, which was upheld on appeal, where the opposing party responded to discovery after a dispositive motion to pad their bill and their pleadings contained blank template placeholders
Navigated and obtained settlement for two plaintiffs as part of a fifty-seven plaintiff, complex-designated case against the landlords of an uninhabitable apartment building in Oakland; the landlords were also being sued by the City of Oakland, and the building placed under receivership, where defendants sought unsuccessfully to erase all plaintiffs’ claims through bankruptcy
Won summary judgement for a family in Oakland where a landlord rented an unpermitted unit, then tried to evict the family after they requested repairs; the eviction action claimed the lease was void and the family was committing illegal activity by simply occupying the unit; ruling in favor of the family on summary judgement, the trial court found the landlord failed to state any valid exception to the Oakland Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance, which was upheld on appeal
Ostertag Law Office
802 B Street
San Rafael, California 94901
Email: costertag@ostertaglaw.com
Office: 415-663-6653
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