Thursday, November 16, 2006

Second Major Trial Victory

This time as a Plaintiff's attorney (hourly fee, not contingent
) for a guy who was badly taken advantage of when he sold his businees. Taken advantage of to say the least - the contract was for $210k with 100 due at signing and 110 to be paid by a promissory note, he was paid only 50K and then even sued by a bank personally on a line of credit from the business after the buyer stopped paying on it ashe was never released from liability for the business credit line. That kind of being taken advantage of.

Add to it that our client is not fluent in english, and defendant #1 drew up the contract in english with very nebulous and one-sided terms including that our client acknowledged he received the full 100k at signing, and that defendant #1 has been convicted for multiple violent acts and is now under indictment federally for fraud and other nasty business and that he even defrauded defendant #2 in the case it makes the judgment sweet.

Sometimes you may have a doubt as to who is telling the truth in a he said - he said situation, but here given how he and his defense counsel acted throughout the case, and the multitude of lies he told and how he acted at his deposition, its pretty clear to me that we were on the side of the angels, admittedly an imperfect one, in this case.

Here's an example of their conduct in the case - giving me a stack of documents on the day of trial saying how they "just found it" after I sent them a document request a year ago -- it doesn't wash and the judge was not impressed. In addition, his attorney filed a trial brief on the day before trial, over two weeks overdue with new riddiculous allegations that were contradicted by his filed answer and prior discovery responses and included witnesses that were not on his witness list. This was par for that attorney's and firm's compliance with the court rules and discovery process in this case from day 1.

This win feels real good considering the main defendant was a total, complete and insulting jerk at his deposition, including personal insults of me. One of his memorable insults was "I [him, defendant #1) should have the t-shirt saying my lawyer is better than your lawyer"

We got a $110,000.00 judgment against him and defendant #2 for our client.

Who's got the better lawyer now, baby?

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