Blog Posts

Shirley was married to her husband for 60 years before he passed away.  They owned their own business and had been pretty successful.  Because her husband handled all of the finances in their family, when her husband died, Shirley relied on her adult-son, Jay, to keep track of her finances.  That was a big mistake.

More than a decade later, Shirley passed away.  During the probate of her estate, Shirley’s daughter, Connie, became suspicious of Jay because he refused to allow them to sell what Jay claimed was Shirley’s sole asset, her home.  Connie hired our firm to move things forward.  However, during his investigation, we discovered that Jay appeared to have been embezzling from his mother.  Using written discovery and then taking Jay’s deposition (and also his accountant’s deposition), we established that Jay had stolen over $600,000 from his mother.  In fact, during her last years, Shirley was living meagerly on only her social security checks — not knowing that she had hundreds of thousands more.  Jay hid this money from her and then embezzled it.

The old saying, “Oh what a tangled web we weave . . . ” was never so apropos.  When questioned, Jay first said that he never took any of his mother’s money.  Then, he said she loaned him $600,000.  Then, Jay said he paid back his mother.  However, we scoured Shirley’s bank records and Jay’s bank records and proved that Jay never paid any money to his mother.  This led Jay to say that, “well, I paid back my mom by investing the money — $600,000 — for her.”  But, our investigation proved that Jay invested the money took from his mother into his own investment accounts, not accounts for Shirley.  Jay just could not contrive lies that could explain his previous lies.

On the eve of a court hearing to award our client damages caused by Jay’s embezzlement from his mother, we settled the case for a payment of all of the money Jay stole, punitive-type damages of $600,000, plus attorneys’ fees incurred by our client prosecuting the case — for a total payment from Jay of $1.65 million.

My clients, John and Val, are successful business owners and live in an elegant home in Granite Bay.  Their passion is roses — all kinds of roses and roses from all over the world.  Their landscaping is legendary in the Sacramento area for its uniqueness and beauty.  In the middle of it all lies their 750 picture-perfect rose bushes.  While their landscaping crew of four men work full time maintaining the gardens, John and Val hired a company to spray their gardens with pesticides. Instead, the company used a different chemical, apparently a herbicide, which chemically burned the roses and devastated the gardens John & Val had built and tended for over twenty years.  Though seemingly indisputable, the company denied any liability and fought the litigation with every penny their insurance company had.   The company pointed the finger of blame at its chemical supplier, at John & Val, and at their gardeners. The case went to trial in Placer County.

We knew the biggest hurdle would be convincing a jury of 12 people that my clients should be awarded $1 million to replace their damaged gardens.  After all, not too many people can imagine spending that much on their gardens.

The Defendant called eight (8) expert witnesses to support its claim that someone other than them caused all the damage to the gardens.  Our job was to discredit all of the experts.  We cross-examined their chemicals expert, roses expert, soils expert and all the rest.  One by one, we proved that the experts were — either intentionally or because of lack of knowledge — wrongly blaming others for the damage caused by the company.

In the end, we asked the jury to award $1 million to replace the damaged rose garden and the hundreds of mature trees, bushes and other plants.  The jury awarded us not only all of the cost of replacing the damaged landscaping, but they also awarded $400,000 for pain and suffering caused by the event.  After the jury verdict was read and the case was over, many of the jurors hugged my clients and wished them well.  This trial was a complete vindication for my clients.

For thirty years, our client, Al, was a partner with the Defendants in an engineering firm and commercial real estate business.  When he was 75 years old, Parkinson’s disease and dementia forced Al to stop working. As a result, Defendants took over complete control of the operations of the partnerships, including all of the books and records. At that point, Al’s only information about the businesses came from statements made by his partners (in conversations, emails and letters) and annual written financial reports Defendants prepared and sent to Al.

Once Al was unable to work, Defendants engaged in a 10 year pattern of fraud and embezzlement, taking over $500,000 in monies belonging to Al. When Al’s daughter discovered in 2014 that Defendants had been defrauding and embezzling from her dad, she hired us to get justice.

The case was litigated for years, with Defendants fighting fiercely at every stage.  This case presented many hurdles, but the most daunting was that our client, Al, could not testify at trial because of his dementia.  That meant the Defendants could and did fabricate the most convincing story they could create, knowing that Al was not able to rebut their testimony.  Our only chance of success was to prove through tough cross-examination that the Defendants were testifying falsely.

And, we did that very well.  After a two-week trial, the jury unanimously found the Defendants liable for fraud, embezzlement and financial elder abuse, awarding full damages to Al — plus $400,000 in punitive damages.  On top of that, the court awarded Al attorneys’ fees he spent proving his case — for a total judgment of $1.2 million.

When MCI Telecommunications Co. Suspected it was paying too much to lease a building in So. Natomas, in 1995 it hired a lease-auditing company. And sure enough, the auditor discovered a major goof in the amount of space MCI was actually leasing.  Because of the miscalculation, the company would be overcharged by $1.1 million over the life of the lease.  Now, an $850,000 judgment has been awarded by an arbitration in the case – but not to MCI.

The judgment goes against MCI and to the auditor, who said the telecommunications giant refused to pay him after he discovered the error. In an odd twist of fate, there was no judgment against the landlord that originally made the mistake – a partnership headed by TV and banking magnate Jon Kelly, and some of the principals of KCS Development Co. Real estate brokers say the case is a wake-up call to landlords and tenants alike to be more careful with large leasing deals. “The real estate community will think twice about the way it does leases after this,” said Jeffrey Ochrach, attorney for CRI Advisors Inc., the lease auditor.

Sacramento-based CRI Advisors was hired in 1995 to check the amount of space MCI was leasing at 2495 Natomas Park Drive.  In 1990, MCI signed a 10-year lease for 85,919 square feet in the first class-A office space built in South Natomas. In 1993, MCI added another chunk of space, putting the total lease at 95,305 square feet.  MCI would pay about $21 million over the 10 years, Ochrach said. The lease was in one of two mirror-glass, six-story office buildings put up near Interstate 5 and the garden Highway in 1989 by Kelly and some of his partners from KCS Development.   Five years later, MCI retained CRI Advisors, a three-person company that specializes in precisely measuring the amount of space leased in buildings. Owner Paul Ponzelli said his agreement with MCI was that his firm would  be paid 50 percent of any overcharge it discovered in the lease.   CRI Advisors found that MCI was paying for 5,000 square feet that it wasn’t using.  Ponzelli figured that would result in a $1.1 million overcharge to MCI over the term of the lease.  But to his surprise, MI refused to pay his half of the savings. He took the issue to the American Arbitration Association, a group of retired judges and lawyers who rule on cases the litigants don’t want to take to court.

During hearings in June, MCI claimed it had a prior agreement with the landlord that the extra space would be included in the lease.  MCI and the landlord also claimed it had been measured to their mutual satisfaction.   But the arbitrators found that MCI was being charged for space it wasn’t using, that Ponzelli had discovered the error and that CRI should be paid.  The panel awarded CRI a total of about $850,000.  “I’d say the lease-auditor business is going to pick up,” said John Frisch, a prominent office leasing agent and manager of Cornish & Carey Commercial/ Oncor International. “Anytime anything this high profile happens, your going to have more tenants engaging these people.” All parties to a deal are going to have to be more alert in issues like square footage, he said. “It means everybody in the deal is going to have to do a better job.” Dennis Shorrock, manager of the local Colliers International office, said the CRI/MCI case “will alert people to be more careful in signing leases without having their own representatives measure the space to make sure the landlord’s measurement is accurate.” Space measurement is a difficult science.  “A lot of people aren’t really knowledgeable about it and a lot of people don’t really understand it,” Frisch said.  “I’d say a whole lot of buildings don’t conform to the standards.”