Lake Forest, CA
Litigation Lawyer at Lake Forest, CA
Practice Areas: Litigation, Libel & Slander ... +3 more
OUTCOME: $1.6 million judgment for mLogica.
I represented mLogica, an IT company, in a defamation action against Pankaj Karan. Karan had sent an email to mLogica's customers, falsely claiming that it had not delivered his software.
OUTCOME: $1.1 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
Represented plaintiff in an action against corporation and its owners, to recover $250,000 loan. Defendants claimed that the money was an investment, and therefore not recoverable.
OUTCOME: $697,500 judgment for our client
Our client loaned over $200,000 to an individual who claimed he had a particular product he was about to market, and that sales from that product would be used to repay the loan. The loan was never rep ... aid, and it turned out that the defendant had lied about owning the product. We were retained to recover the unpaid loan. Instead of simply suing for breach of contract and possibly fraud, we included a cause of action for violation of Penal Code section 496, which makes it a crime to receive property "that has been obtained in any manner constituting theft." The trial court awarded the $200,000 for the breach of contract, and then tripled the damages to $600,000 for the Penal Code violation. The defendant appealed, claiming damages could not be awarded in a civil action for violation of a criminal statute for which he had never been convicted. In the first published decision on the issue, the Court of Appeal agreed with our novel application of the criminal statute, and upheld the award. We are very proud of this award, because it aptly demonstrates how we strive to approach every case with a fresh look, and obtain results beyond normal expectations.