On February 15, 2022, Brenna Gano logged onto a Zoom call expecting a routine check-in. What happened next would cost her everything.
By Michael Phillips | Riptide Investigations
The Setup
By November 2021, Brenna Gano had been fighting in San Mateo County family court for three years.
She had lost her Woodside home, forced out in two weeks under pressure her attorneys coordinated with opposing counsel. She was living in a rat-infested rental in Redwood City, caring for the family dogs, attending law school full-time, and trying to maintain a relationship with her son through a custody arrangement that had never gone back to the 50/50 she’d been promised.
She had spent approximately $300,000 in legal fees. Her ex-husband, Paul McNab — a senior executive at Viavi Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ: VIAV) — had spent approximately $900,000. California Family Code §§ 2030 through 2032 exist precisely to prevent this kind of financial disparity in litigation. They had not been enforced.
It was during this period, when things were feeling increasingly wrong, that two things happened in quick succession that Brenna would only fully understand in retrospect.
In mid-November 2021, during law school study week — the week designated for exam preparation — she was served with 89 special interrogatories. Not a handful. Not a routine discovery set. Eighty-nine questions, many of them invasive inquiries into her PTSD diagnosis and mental health history, delivered at the moment she was least able to respond. Her amended court filing characterizes them as deliberately designed to harass and intimidate, in violation of her ADA protections.
| Interrogatories are written questions sent by one party to another during legal discovery to obtain evidence about facts, witnesses, and documents. They must be answered in writing under oath, typically within 30 days. Types include Form (pre-approved) and Special (custom) interrogatories, generally limited to 25-30 in number. Anything more would require a Court Order or Declaration of Necessity. |
A week later, on November 22, 2021, she paid $495 for a legal consultation with Victoria “Tori” Lewis of Madigan & Lewis LLP — a San Mateo firm recommended by a Palo Alto friend. During that Zoom consultation, Lewis disclosed that Michele Bissada — the attorney representing Paul McNab — was a close personal friend. Lewis praised Brenna’s attorney, Stephen Montalvo, and told her she was in good hands. She also told Brenna: “You know, women in this area want to get divorced and continue living this luxurious lifestyle.”
Brenna walked away reassured. She would later characterize the meeting very differently.
“Upon reflection, I can see how the entire $500 meeting was designed to pump me for information, profile me, and determine my weaknesses, which were obviously my child and position in law school. These were the two areas most under attack by the private judge, Catherine Gallagher, on 2/15/2022.”
— Brenna Gano
While Brenna was in study week and paying for a consultation, she later came to see as profiling, something else was happening on the other side of the case. Between November 18 and December 20, 2021 — a single month — Paul McNab paid his attorney, Michele Bissada of Flicker Kerin Kruger & Bissada LLP, approximately $110,000. Bank statements documenting those payments are on file with Riptide.
The MSC was sixty days away.
The Morning of February 15
Stephen J. Montalvo, a Certified Family Law Specialist, had told Brenna that February 15 was going to be a low-key day. A status conference. A check-in to see where the parties stood. Nothing binding.
Brenna took the day off from law school. She logged onto Zoom from home, alone. No support person. No ADA accommodations, despite her documented diagnoses of ADHD and PTSD — conditions for which she had active accommodations in her law school program at the time. Post-COVID, private proceedings had typically returned to in-person conference rooms. This one had not.
A woman appeared on her screen and introduced herself as Judge Catherine Gallagher, retired, presiding through JAMS — one of the country’s largest private dispute-resolution firms.
Then Judge Gallagher said: “I’m so glad you decided to do mediation today.”
“I went into shock and froze when I realized I’d been duped. The private judge appeared on screen and said she was glad I decided to do mediation. I literally thought I was attending a status conference.”
— Brenna Gano
Dr. Bandy Lee, a Yale-trained forensic psychiatrist who evaluated Brenna in January 2026, later documented what that shock meant clinically. Dr. Lee found that the February 15 proceeding caused Brenna to experience acute stress-related dissociation — a state in which she could not access her rational brain. She experienced out-of-body sensations, emotional numbing, memory lapses, and cognitive disorganization. Before the session moved to contested issues, she spent 45 minutes talking about her dog — a safe period of her life before all the legal proceedings began. Dr. Lee concluded that Brenna’s ability to advocate for herself was clinically impaired throughout the proceedings.
What Brenna was sitting inside was not a status conference. It was not mediation. It was a Mandatory Settlement Conference before a privately compensated judge pro tempore — a retired judge authorized to act with the full authority of the court. Any agreement reached that day could be entered as a binding judgment. Brenna had not been told this.
According to her Amended Request for Order to Set Aside, filed in October 2025, Judge Gallagher’s own JAMS disclosures show multiple concurrent cases between Gallagher and Michele Bissada — the attorney for the opposing party — during this same period. That conflict was not disclosed to Brenna, in potential violation of California Rules of Court 2.831 and Code of Civil Procedure § 170.1(a)(6)(A)(iii).
California Rules of Court Rule 5.215(e) and Family Code § 3190 also explicitly state that private judging is contraindicated in cases involving domestic violence or major financial disparity. Brenna’s case had a documented financial disparity of more than three to one. The proceeding went ahead anyway.
Inside the Room
Stajonne Mialocq Montalvo — Stephen Montalvo’s wife, whose separate law practice operated next door in a building owned by their shared law partner, Philip Silvestri — was Brenna’s limited-scope child custody attorney. Her representation was explicitly restricted to custody matters. She had no authority over financial negotiations.
Inside the MSC, she took control anyway.
According to Brenna’s court filings and contemporaneous account, Stajonne assumed the lead role in proceedings, leveraging custody threats to pressure Brenna into financial terms she had not had adequate time to analyze. The two depositions scheduled to complete financial discovery were set for February 17 and 18 — the two days immediately following the MSC. They had not yet occurred. The financial disclosures Paul McNab had provided were based on 2019 statements — nearly three years out of date for a 2022 proceeding.
The message inside that session was not subtle. Sign the agreement, or lose her son.
According to Brenna — consistent with her own email to Steve Montalvo, written the same week — Judge Gallagher made several pointed personal remarks during the proceedings. Gallagher berated her for attending UC Hastings School of Law. She compared Brenna unfavorably to a mother who had “stopped working and gone to study at a Buddhist monastery.” She told Brenna she was spending too much on housing, while Paul McNab owned a ranch in Gilroy and rented a home in Menlo Park. She raised child custody issues at the outset of what was supposed to be a property and finance settlement. Brenna’s email described feeling “bullied and harassed” throughout.
There was no court reporter present. A court reporter had been hired for the deposition of custody evaluator Dr. Frank Davis on November 3, 2021 — three months earlier. Not for this. There is no transcript of what was said inside that session.
She Signed — And Then the Door Slammed
The Memorandum of Agreement was executed across multiple days and — as the document itself reveals — across multiple signature pages. Paul McNab signed on February 20. Michele Bissada and Linda M. Anderson signed for the petitioner on February 20. Stephen Montalvo signed on February 21. Stajonne Montalvo signed on February 21.
Judge Catherine Gallagher — the retired judge who had presided over the February 15 proceeding and under whose authority Brenna had been told she must sign or lose her son — did not sign the document until March 2, 2022. The word “February” is crossed out on her signature line in the document, with the date written in by hand. That is fifteen days after the session. The urgency that was used to coerce Brenna’s agreement on February 15 was not reflected in any urgency on Gallagher’s part to execute the document she had presided over.
On Brenna’s copy of the MOA — the version on file with the court — her signature line is blank. No signature. No date. A document binding her to years of financial and custodial terms, executed by every other party, with her own line empty.
Under the circumstances Dr. Bandy Lee later documented — acute dissociation, cognitive disorganization, inability to access rational thought during the February 15 proceeding — that blank line and the fractured execution timeline raise a question her pending set-aside motion puts directly before the court: whether an agreement assembled this way, under these conditions, constitutes meaningful informed consent.
The MOA itself was comprehensive and one-sided in its construction. It addressed property division, support obligations, and debt allocation. It contained a $255,000 cap on spousal support — embedded, Brenna later argued, in a way that undermined the very Smith-Ostler formula the agreement purported to apply, defeating the purpose of variable support entirely. It waived further discovery. It waived trial rights. It made itself independently enforceable. It contained no findings — no judicial determination of disputed facts, no explanation of why the allocations were equitable, no acknowledgment of the financial asymmetry between the parties.
What Brenna received in exchange was a promise she had heard before: complete the therapy requirements, check the boxes, and 50/50 custody would be restored.
It never was.
“They Led Me to Slaughter”
When the session ended, Brenna called a college friend in New York City. She kept repeating the same words.
“They led me to slaughter. My own lawyers led me to slaughter.”
— Brenna Gano, as recalled by her college friend, the night of February 15, 2022
Her friend was so shaken by the call that she cried to her husband that night.
Within six weeks, Brenna was trying to undo what had happened. On March 30, 2022, she emailed Stajonne directly: “Since judgment is not yet entered, why can’t we say the whole thing is null and void?”
Stajonne’s reply that morning did not address the question. Instead, it redirected: “I understand your need to get CCCT therapy started ASAP.”
The following day, March 31, Brenna escalated to Steve Montalvo directly: “Please rescind the agreement based on duress and Paul’s inability to adhere to the terms. Please take care of this before it enters Judgment.”
His reply: “I respectfully decline to file this motion. You will not prevail. You will likely be ordered to pay Paul’s attorney fees. If you find another attorney to file your motion, I will withdraw.”
That afternoon, Stajonne added: “Nothing good will come of you moving to set aside this agreement.”
The attorney who had exceeded her limited scope to pressure Brenna into signing a financial agreement was now refusing to help undo it — and warning her not to try. Every time Brenna raised rescission, the response from her own legal team was the same: more therapy, more boxes to check, more compliance. The door to reversal closed a little more each time.
The Door Closes
Brenna began looking for new representation almost immediately. Over the following three years, she consulted more than twenty attorneys. The pattern was consistent: attorneys acknowledged that something had gone wrong, that the MOA terms were problematic, that the process had been irregular. One told her explicitly that Stajonne Mialocq Montalvo “really didn’t like” her. None agreed to take the case.
Several expressed the same specific concern: the case involved well-known local counsel and a JAMS private judge. In San Mateo County’s small, insular family law bar, that combination made the case untouchable. As one attorney put it — the professionals were too well-connected to challenge.
On March 31, 2022, Brenna formally notified her attorneys that she was rescinding the agreement on grounds of duress. She rescinded again through new counsel in June 2023. She filed her own Request for Order to Set Aside in July 2025. She filed an Amended Request for Order in October 2025, expanding the grounds to include fraud, concealment, and ADA violations.
The MOA was not submitted for entry as judgment for over two years after signing. When it was finally entered on October 29, 2024, Brenna was listed in court records as self-represented — her most recent attorney’s substitution of counsel apparently never properly processed. She learned this only when her attorney’s responsive declarations were rejected. She had hours to prepare her own 117-page declaration and submit it in person at the clerk’s window.
A 2023 motion to reconsider support allocations based on changed circumstances was placed on the calendar. It was never heard. No ruling. No denial. No record. It disappeared.
What the Record Shows
The facts documented across Brenna Gano’s court filings, email records, billing statements, and contemporaneous accounts establish the following sequence:
- Stephen Montalvo misrepresented the February 15 proceeding as a non-binding status conference.
- Stajonne Montalvo exceeded her limited-scope authority by taking control of financial negotiations.
- Judge Gallagher had undisclosed concurrent cases with opposing counsel Bissada.
- No court reporter was present. No transcript exists.
- Discovery was incomplete, with depositions scheduled for the two days immediately after.
- Financial disclosures before the adjudicator were three years out of date.
- Brenna attended alone, by Zoom, without ADA accommodations, in a clinically documented state of acute dissociation.
- When she attempted to rescind six weeks later, both attorneys refused to support her and redirected her to therapy.
- Over the following three years, no attorney in San Mateo County would take her case.
Stephen Montalvo, Stajonne Mialocq Montalvo, Michele Bissada, Victoria Lewis, and Judge Catherine Gallagher (Ret.) did not respond to requests for comment submitted by Riptide. JAMS did not respond to a request for comment regarding the conflict disclosures. Paul McNab did not respond to a request for comment.
Brenna Gano’s Amended Request for Order to Set Aside the MOA is currently pending before the San Mateo County Superior Court. A hearing originally scheduled for January 2026 was continued to May 20, 2026, after her attempt to disqualify the presiding judge was denied. She is representing herself.
“The settlement is wrong on so many levels and at least in my mind, functions as a complete agreement with all parts connected.”
— Brenna Gano, email to Stephen Montalvo, March 31, 2022
She wrote that six weeks after signing. It has been more than three years since.
Her son is now 18. He has not had a meaningful relationship with her or her family since the agreement she signed that Tuesday morning — in a state she could not fully understand at the time, and could not undo afterward — was used to entrench a custody arrangement she had been told was temporary.
The next article in this series asks the question Brenna has been asking for three years: why did her own lawyers appear to lead her into this? The emails, billing records, and professional relationships documented in the case file point toward a closed network with shared interests that did not include hers. That is the subject of Part Five.
Documents referenced in this article — including the Amended Request for Order to Set Aside the MOA, billing records, and email correspondence — are on file with Riptide.
This is the fourth article in the Riptide investigative series on the San Mateo County family court.
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