News Items Regarding Morris & Stone, LLP     
  

The Morris Law Firm Becomes Morris & Stone, LLP

The Morris Law Firm is proud to announce that, effective December 1, 2007, Deanna Stone Killeen became a partner in the firm.  The firm name will be changed to Morris & Stone, LLP.

Deanna Stone Killeen graduated Summa Cum Laude with highest honors from Whittier Law School, in Costa Mesa, California.  During her time in law school, Ms. Stone Killeen earned eight CALI Excellence for the Future Awards which are awarded to the student in each law school course achieving the top grade. Additionally, Ms. Stone Killeen was presented with the coveted West Outstanding Achievement Award in 2004, which is awarded to only four law students each year.

Ms. Stone Killeen practiced as a paralegal with The Morris Law Firm for 10 years prior to obtaining her law degree, and has a total of 15 years legal experience in the areas of civil litigation, business litigation, employment law, and legal malpractice.

The Morris Law Firm Scores a "Hat Trick" -- Three Appellate Victories in Three Months (with a Fourth for Good Measure)

[Santa Ana -- Court of Appeal] Appeals can take two years, and there is no way to know just when the Court of Appeal or Supreme Court will render its opinion. So it is an exciting time when a long-awaited opinion is rendered, especially, of course, when that opinion is in the client's favor. You can imagine the excitement at The Morris Law Firm when three appellate decisions came in, back to back to back, all of them winners. The first involved an important contract law issue, and the second two arose from procedural issues. For icing on the cake, a fourth opinion was issued days later. In this last case we prevailed on seven of the nine issues raised on appeal. And while the plaintiff/appellant thus prevailed on the other two issues, he immediately dismissed the case since the surviving causes of action did not provide for the recovery of damages (in other words, our clients won).

Victory for The Morris Law Firm in San Diego Federal Court

"It just doesn't pass the smell test." That was the statement used by Aaron Morris in his closing argument to describe the way in which the defendants had manipulated things in order to avoid paying commissions to our client. A unanimous jury agreed, and awarded our client $500,000 in damages, which grew to over $725,000 with attorney fees and costs. Defendants were represented by James McCarthy from the Cincinnati law firm Katz, Teller, Brant & Hild and Robert Rose from the San Diego law firm Rose & Associates, who had to learn all over again the old adage, "it's not what you say, it's how you say it." For the complete story, go to Champagne Wishes and Bubble-Gum Dreams.

The Morris Law Firm Makes a Major "Withdrawal" from Bank of America

[Long Beach Superior Court] Our business client suffered a serious loss of reputation when Bank of America closed two of its checking accounts without any notice, causing several checks to bounce. Our client asked only for a letter of apology, so that it could show the letter to its customers and explain that the snafu had been the fault of Bank of America. Bank of America refused. We were then retained, and we made the same request. Bank of America again refused, claiming that it was permitted to close the accounts without notice pursuant to the agreement between the parties, and stated we could never establish liability. Never say never. The jury told Bank of America to get out its checkbook and write our client a check for nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Bank of America was represented both by its own in-house counsel and Tim Lambirth (see photo), Holly Hayes and Janet Catmull from the the firm of Ivanjack & Lambirth. For more details, see our Victories page.

Aaron Morris Named "Attorney for the New Millennium" by Consumer Business Review

Congratulations to Aaron Morris. Consumer Business Review, in conjunction with the Daily Pilot newspaper, named him "Attorney for the New Millennium".

The Morris Law Firm Collects $75,000 for its Client from Opposing Counsel

He said our complaint would never survive, he said we would never win, and once we did, he said we would never collect. Not exactly prescient. For his discovery abuses and conversion of funds, the court ordered opposing counsel to pay our client $78,000. Despite his best efforts to remain judgment proof, we collected $75,000 for our client, which is above and beyond the damages we collected from the opposing party. For the complete story, go to "Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave" on our Recent Victories page.

Latham & Watkins Joins the Fray and Bites the Dust

The mighty continue to fall. With nearly 1,000 attorneys world-wide, the law firm of Latham & Watkins is quite the juggernaut. Although there were already two law firms representing the plaintiff in the action in question, including the entire UCLA Legal Department, when faced with The Morris Law Firm representing one of the defendants in the action in question, attorneys for the plaintiff apparently decided they needed that Latham & Watkins juggernaut to help oppose a motion for summary judgment and motion to compel.

In typical fashion, a total of six attorneys were sent on behalf of plaintiff to the hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court to oppose the motions, against Aaron Morris from The Morris Law Firm.

Despite their best efforts, Latham & Watkins could not turn the tide. Plaintiff's attorneys failed to defeat the motion for summary judgment, and their client was sanctioned by the court for their discovery tactics.

Parker, Milliken, Clark, O'Hara & Samuelian Rethinks its Position

A good mediator will always explain to the parties the folly of drawing a line in the sand and daring the other side to cross. If you resort to posturing and overstating your position, it makes it more difficult to come off of that position, and at the very least you end up losing face when the other side proves you wrong. Unfortunately, many attorneys have never learned this simple lesson. They take a position, usually based on their interpretation of the law, and refuse to even consider the other side. The result is that they drag their client through a losing trial, or lose all credibility when they are finally forced to face reality and settle. Such was the case in a matter we recently handled.

Our client had a long term commercial lease, with a five year extension option. When he served notice that he was exercising that extension option, the landlord refused to recognize his right to do so, claiming that he had been in default of the lease at some point during the prior ten years. The real story was that the landlord wanted to sell the property, and the low rent our client was paying under the terms of the lease would impact the sales price. If the landlord could force our client out, it was believed that the space could be rented at a higher price, which in turn would raise the selling price of the property.

We sued to enforce the five year extension, and opposing counsel attacked on a second front, claiming that our client owed $18,000 in past due rent, and threatening to evict if that rent was not paid. We advised our client to pay the $18,000 under protest, so that we would not have to fight an eviction action, but we promised that we would get that money back through the already pending action.

At each subsequent settlement discussion, we would take the position that no agreement could be reached until the $18,000 was returned. Additionally, opposing counsel kept trying to insert the current fair market rental rate for the property into the discussion, but we refused to let him, claiming that the fair market rental rate was irrelevant (we believe that if you have an agreement for a certain lease amount, the landlord can't just raise the rent when that rate becomes lower than the current market rate -- a concept that was foreign to defense counsel).

Let the posturing begin. Every time we raised the issue, opposing counsel would be outraged that we would even consider that the $18,000 would be returned, and stated that if we were telling our client that there was any possibility that he would ever see that money, that we should correct that misconception immediately. Not only was that never going to happen, but he was going to successfully sue for an additional $60,000 in unpaid rent, he claimed. And as to our position that the current market rate was irrelevant, he would flail his arms, his voice would crack, and he would implore the court to see how unreasonable we were being, that whatever the lease might say, of course the current market rate is relevant.

With the trial approaching, opposing counsel caved. They agreed to return the $18,000 that had been paid under protest (what happened to "that will never happen"?) and agreed that our client could remain in the property at the rate set forth in the lease (apparently the fair market rate was irrelevant). Additionally, they had been contending that we had better settle since, even if we won, our client would have to vacate in five years, and we would be unable to sell the business without an extended lease. Thus, all the goodwill of the business would be lost. Under the settlement, defendant landlord is required to offer a 15 year lease to any prospective buyer, at a specified rate. Thus, our client ended up in a far better position than he would have been in even if we had gone to court and won.

To be fair, the settlement agreement is not all bad for the landlord. If our client sells the business, the new tenant will be paying a higher rent, and the property will fetch a higher selling price. But this was a win-win situation we would have jumped for at any time in the action. If it had been offered without all the posturing, opposing counsel would not have had to eat his words.

For a sample of some of the litigation tactics employed in this case by Parker, Milliken, Clark, O'Hara & Samuelian, see "The $2,000 Hissy-Fit" and "Everyone is Entitled to Our Opinion".

Another Victory for The Morris Law Firm at Court of Appeal

We tried and tried to convince opposing counsel that the case was not subject to arbitration, but he refused to listen. He took the position that the Superior Court had no jurisdiction, even though he was the one that had filed the complaint. After we obtained a substantial judgment against his client on our cross-complaint, he filed a mea culpa declaration stating that numerous problems had prevented him from representing his client properly. When we successfully opposed his motion to vacate, he appealed. The opposition argued that since the attorney was taking blame for the mistake, relief was mandatory. We argued that an attorney cannot commit to a trial strategy and then try to undo his mistake by filing a mea culpa declaration. The Court of Appeal agreed with us, and affirmed the judgment. For the complete story, go to "Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave" on our Recent Victories page.

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Aaron P. Morris is a Partner with the law firm of Morris & Stone, LLP, located in Santa Ana, California. He can be reached at (714) 954-0700, or amorris@toplawfirm.com.  The practice areas of Morris & Stone include employment law (wrongful termination, sexual harassment, wage/overtime claims), business litigation (breach of contract, trade secret, partnership dissolution, unfair business practices, etc.), real estate and construction disputes, first amendment law, Internet law, discrimination claims, defamation suits, and legal malpractice.

NOTICE PURSUANT TO BUSINESS & PROFESSIONS CODE SECTION 6158.3:  The outcome of any case will depend on the facts specific to that case. Nothing contained in any portion of this web site should be taken as a representation of how your particular case would be concluded, or even that a case with similar facts will have a similar result. The result of any case discussed herein was dependent on the facts of that case, and the results will differ if based on different facts.