After a three week trial, a Sacramento County jury found Westlake Financial Services, a major Los Angeles car loan company, guilty of fraudulent lending practices, and awarded a Sacramento Dollar Rent a Car franchise over $400,000 in damages plus $2.7 million in punitive damages.  “The jury found that Westlake induced Dollar to enter into contracts by making false representations, overcharged interest, assessed unwarranted late charges, and failed to give credit for many monthly payments,” said Dollar’s attorney, Jeffrey H. Ochrach of Roseville.

The litigation stemmed from breaches of agreements under which Dollar bought and financed fleets of rental cars with Westlake.  Under their contracts with Dollar, Westlake was required to buy back most of these cars, thereby paying off the balance on the loan.  But Westlake refused to honor its contracts and then sued Dollar on the loans Westlake failed to pay off.  This dispute took five years to get to trial.  At trial, Westlake introduced many documents that Dollar asserted were highly questionable: “After five years of litigation, Westlake ‘found’ invoices, checks and other documents it somehow couldn’t find when we asked for them before trial.  These documents were supposed to help their case, but I think the jury recognized that Westlake fabricated these documents during trial and it cemented the notion that these guys were untrustworthy,” said Mr. Ochrach.

“One of the things that makes this case so satisfying is that Westlake sued Dollar for about $1 million, claiming enormous amounts of interest, late fees of $140,000 and denying receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments.  But the jury waded through all of the accounting evidence and determined that Dollar had fully paid these loans – in fact, Dollar overpaid.”  Mr. Ochrach commented, “I explained to the jury that the only way to stop this kind of fraud is to hit Westlake with a verdict that catches the attention of Westlake’s shareholders and the public.”  The jury’s message was loud and clear.

A former politician who resumed practicing law after retiring from the legislature sued Mr. Ochrach’s client, Marty, for unpaid legal fees. On behalf of his client, Mr. Ochrach countersued the lawyer for legal malpractice. Why? The lawyer represented Marty in his corporate matters,
and the lawyer failed to properly advise Marty about a contract with one of his employees. The employee sued Marty claiming he was a 50% partner entitled to half of the profits of the company, and the employee won.  Marty claimed the employee was not a partner and, instead, was given a 10% profit sharing in the company. The reason the employee won, according to Mr. Ochrach, was that the lawyer failed to properly document the relationship with the employee.

Just before trial, Mr. Ochrach convinced the court to throw out the lawyer’s lawsuit against Marty. Then, the parties went to trial over Marty’s lawsuit for legal malpractice. The highlight of the trial was Mr. Ochrach’s cross-examination of the lawyer. Mr. Ochrach was able to show to the jury how simple it would have been for a competent lawyer to draft a simple contract that would have laid out the terms of the employee’s compensation, which would have defeated the employee’s claim that he was owed a percentage of profits of the company.

At the conclusion of trial, the jury awarded Mr. Ochrach’s client $2.8 million.

The plaintiff alleged a conspiracy to defraud her arising from transactions involving the sale of a ranch and Percheron horses. At trial, the plaintiff called defendant’s alleged co-conspirator to testify against Mr. Ochrach’s client. However, Mr. Ochrach had thoroughly investigated this witness and the plaintiff and, on cross-examination, impeached the witnesses almost every minute. In fact, after about 30 minutes of of cross-examination, the alleged co-conspirator — who was really a co-conspirator with the plaintiff — began pleading the 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to every question. Mr. Ochrach had destroyed his credibility.

In the end, the judge entered a decision exonerating Mr. Ochrach’s client of any wrongdoing — a complete defense victory.

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.