News Items Regarding The Morris Law Firm

The Morris Law Firm is proud to announce that, effective December 1, 2007, Deanna Stone Killeen will become 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 8 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 4 law students each year.

Ms. Stone Killeen practiced as a paralegal with this 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.

[UPDATE -- January 11, 2007] A company called Pallorium sued our client when his spam filter allegedly blocked legitimate e-mails. We won the claim after a short eight hour trial, because we established that spam filters are protected by the Communications Decency Act.

Sadly, Pallorium did not go quietly into the night. It was clear from his statements at trial that Steve Rombom (aka Rambam), the president of Pallorium, was taking the case very personally. Pallorium filed an appeal, making the same claims it had made in objecting to the the trial court's tentative decision. Pallorium's counsel, Gary Kurtz, argued that the judgment in favor of Jared denied Pallorium the right to a jury trial and was defective because of Jared's alleged bad faith, again claiming that testing someone's server to see if it is an open relay somehow amounts to criminal conduct. Kurtz went for an emotional approach, trying to show the potential for mischief if someone is permitted to block e-mail based on their own definition of what constitutes spam. Pallorium continued to argue that the Communications Decency Act only protects content-based spam filters. It claimed that Jared's filter should not be protected because he had decided to block any e-mails coming from an open relay. Kurtz argued that such an over-inclusive filter could block legitimate e-mails, and therefore should not be protected. In one of our favorite passages, Kurtz makes the following emotional appeal in Pallorium's brief:

"Should a California Court immunize the conduct of the Society for Historical Review (or some other Neo-Nazi organization) if it decided to block the e-mail of the Simon Wiesenthal Center? Should a California Court immunize the conduct of the North-American Man-Boy Love Association (or some other pedophile society) if it decided to block the e-mail of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children? Should a California court immunize the conduct of Al Qaida if it decided to block the e-mail of the C.I.A.?"

Sounds great, but this extreme language does not withstand the slightest scrutiny. Jared did not block a single e-mail going to others. Jared designed a e-mail filter for his own use and like anyone was free to set whatever restrictions he wanted on that filter. For example, you can set your e-mail system to receive e-mails only from those people listed in your address book. Can a spammer now sue you because you are blocking his efforts to explain to you the virtues of Viagra? If your spouse decides to make use of your filter, are you now liable because you have distributed a spam filter that could keep her from receiving messages from the C.I.A.? Of course not, and no emotional hypothetical will change that fact. Imagine what your inbox would contain if spam filters were limited in the manner Pallorium proposed.

After noting the diligence of The Morris Law Firm, the California Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment in favor of Jared. The Communications Decency Act immunizes "a provider . . . of an interactive computer service" who makes available to "others the technical means to restrict access to material . . . the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected." As the Court said, "whether Jared's filter was over-inclusive is irrelevant so long as he deemed the material to be 'obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.'"

Tustin Magazine named Aaron Morris "Best Attorney" in its 2007 "Best of" awards.

[February 15, 2003 -- Santa Ana] Our client loaned over $57,000 to a friend, and the friend then refused to repay the money. That normally would be a simple case to prove, but there were some major problems. First, the payments to defendant had been made over a number of years, most of them in relatively small amounts, giving the impression that they might have been gifts (which is what the defendant was contending). Next, the agreement was entirely oral; there was nothing in writing to prove that the money was a loan. Finally, and most problematic, the breach of the agreement appeared to have occurred many years before, and the statute of limitations on an oral agreement is just two years.

The defendant was represented by Thomas M. Davis of Wilson, Borror, Dunn & Davis. He argued throughout the case that we would never be able to prove that the money was a loan, and contended that the case would be barred by the statute of limitations. That conviction died on the day of trial. After a pre-trial conference with the judge during which Aaron Morris set forth how he would prove the case, defendant agreed to a stipulated judgment in the full amount sought by our client -- $69,500. Judgment was entered in our client's favor without ever calling a witness.

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

[June 26 -- Santa Ana] 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).

[March 9, 2001 -- San Diego] "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. 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.

[Update: June 25, 2001 -- Costa Mesa] Defendants brought what is called a Rule 50 motion, seeking a new trial or judgment based on several claims of error. Defendants' motion was denied in all regards. Even though they utterly lost the action, one of the defendants sought costs and attorney fees, arguing that plaintiff had failed to prevail on one of several different theories of liability. The court denied that motion as well. Instead, the court added costs, attorney fees and certain other damages to the judgment for plaintiff, increasing the total judgment to over $725,000.

[Update: September 7, 2001 -- Costa Mesa] There is something to be said for tenacity, but at this point defendants must be feeling rather punch drunk from the repeated beatings. A defendant can keep the plaintiff from collecting a judgment by appealing the judgment and posting a bond. This protects the plaintiff, who is paid by the bonding company at the conclusion of the appeal, even if the defendant has subsequently gone out of business or concealed assets. Defendants and their attorney James McCarthy from the Cincinnati law firm Katz, Teller, Brant & Hild did not want to follow that procedure, and instead brought a motion for permission to put the money in an interest bearing account, with their own attorneys as the signatories! When we dared to suggest that such an approach would not adequately protect our client since opposing counsel would be in control of the money, defendants' attorneys were shocked, and said we had impugned their integrity. But when we called their bluff by saying that we would accept their plan, with the exception that we would be the signatories, for some reason that was unacceptable. Not surprisingly, we defeated the motion and forced defendants to post a proper bond.

[June 9, 2000 -- Long Beach] 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, Holly Hayes and Janet Catmull from the the firm of Ivanjack & Lambirth. For more details, see our Recent Results page.

[August 10, 2000 -- Long Beach] Bank of America could not accept the judgment by the jury, and brought four post-trial motions asking the court to either reduce the judgment, or throw it out altogether. In a wise move, Bank of America abandoned its motion for new trial, since with that motion it ran the risk that plaintiff would be awarded even greater damages. The other three motions were denied by the court, leaving the full judgment in place. Bank of America's counsel referred to our trial attorney, Aaron Morris, as "one hell of a good attorney."

[October 11, 2001 -- Los Angeles] Still unable to understand the basis for the judgment, Bank of America appealed that judgment and the rulings on the motions discussed above. At trial, we had demonstrated that our client lost customers because of what Bank of America had done. We then showed that, on average, a certain number of potential customers would be lost through negative referrals for every existing customer that was lost. Bank of America argued on appeal that it should somehow be "credited" for those customers that were not lost since they could not have possibly given any negative referrals. Not only did this argument not make sense, it was not a proper matter for appeal. The Court of Appeal rejected all of Bank of America's arguments, and affirmed the judgment in full.

[October 26, 2001 -- Costa Mesa] Appellate Victory: A new attorney came into the picture at Bank of America, and apparently brought a fresh perspective. Bank of America made the wise decision not to pursue an appeal to the California Supreme Court. The bank paid the judgment in full, plus an additional $37,000 in interest and fees.

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

[February, 2001 -- Newport Beach] Congratulations to Aaron Morris. Consumer
Business Review, in conjunction with the Daily Pilot newspaper, named him "Attorney for the New Millennium".

[February 2001 -- Costa Mesa] 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.

[April 26, 2000 -- Los Angeles] 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.

Tustin Magazine named Aaron Morris "Best Attorney" in its 2006 "Best of" awards.

[January 18, 2000 -- Santa Ana] The Morris Law Firm started the year 2000 with a major victory that will go a long way toward better defining contract law in the employment context. On January 18, 2000, the California Court of Appeal granted an appeal brought by The Morris Law Firm, thereby reversing a summary judgment entered in the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Here are the facts of the case. A high ranking manager at a large company was persuaded to leave that company to go to work for what was a smaller company, but one with a "family atmosphere." He was told that he would have a job for life. Indeed, the new company made him promise that he would not leave for at least 15 years. Since he was giving up a long term position with solid job security, the parties specifically agreed that he could only be terminated for good cause.

Two days after he reported for work, he was handed an employment package -- the same package that is distributed to entry level employees. He was told that much of it did not apply to him since he held a managerial position. Nonetheless, he was told to sign all of the forms even if they did not appear to apply to him.

One such form was entitled "At-Will Statement." This form stated that it was an application for employment, and included language to the effect that if the employee were ever hired, he would be hired as an "at-will" employee no matter what other representations were made to him. In other words, no matter what the company might promise, it would still be free to fire him without cause.

Not long after our client began work, the manager he had been hired to replace took a disliking to him and persuaded the company to fire him. Our client sued for breach of his employment agreement on the grounds that he had been fired without good cause. The defendant company brought a motion for summary judgment, claiming that the At-Will Statement made clear that he was an at-will employee, and could therefore be fired without cause. The trial court agreed and granted the motion, thereby ending the case without it ever being decided on the merits.

Due to our extensive expertise in the area of employment law, The Morris Law Firm was retained to handle the appeal.

While it may seem obvious that the case was wrongly decided, in fact the trial court's decision was in line with many appellate decisions. Inexplicably, appellate courts have lost sight of contract principles when it comes to employment cases. They are willing to accept documents signed after the agreement is entered into as evidence that the parties did not mean what they said. To win the day, we hit hard on basic contract principles, and reminded the appellate court that whatever the Clarification Statement said, it could not "rewrite" the express agreement that had already been entered into between the parties. That express, oral agreement provided that the manager could only be fired for good cause.

The respondents were represented by the firm of Campion, Rodolff, Van Riper & Procopio, which argued vigorously that the Clarification Statement left no doubt that the manager was an at-will employee. In their appeal brief, counsel for respondents adopted a tone of distain, claiming there was no basis for the appeal and asserting that we had not made the "right" arguments. At oral argument, Respondents' counsel grew noticeably agitated as it became clear that this Appellate Court was going to keep contract principles firmly in mind, and that respondents were therefore losing. In their unanimous decision, the three Justices reversed the ruling of the trial court and sent the matter back for trial on the merits.

As a result of our representation of the client on appeal, he will now have his day in court, and the defendants will be forced to honor their agreement.

[Update -- December 20, 2000] After our victory before the Court of Appeal, the client retained us to represent him before the Superior Court as well. Faced with that fact, and with the trial date approaching, Defendants agreed to settle the case. This was a case where our client's former attorneys had lost in the trial court, and had advised the client there was no point in appealing. We took it over, had the trial court's ruling reversed on appeal, and received a substantial settlement for the client.

Public Counsel is a private law firm, that was originally intended to be something of a "Legal Aid Society", helping the disenfranchised. While the firm has a history of some good works, it has of late developed a distinct anti-business bent.

Public Counsel brought suit against one of our clients, and although our client was not a proper party to the action, Public Counsel refused to dismiss it from the case. Our client was named as a defendant for no other reason than when the attorney for Public Counsel did a computer search for the business name, she found our client, which has a name similar to the proper defendant. Incredibly, the proper defendant stepped forward and provided declarations stating that our client was not a proper defendant, but Public Counsel refused to voluntarily dismiss our client. In typical Public Counsel fashion, the attorneys were willing to fight to keep our client in the action in the hope of extracting some sort of settlement, even though our client was not a proper party.

Public Counsel paid dearly for its hubris. Five times The Morris Law Firm brought motions to control the conduct of Public Counsel, five times Public Counsel fought the motions (claiming to have spent thousands of dollars in the process) and five times Public Counsel was defeated.

For example, we brought a motion to compel supplemental responses to some simple, straightforward interrogatories. Public Counsel refused to supplement the responses, argued the motion was without merit, claimed they had spent more than 25 hours preparing a ten-page opposition to the motion, and on that basis sought some $3,800 in sanctions.

In reality, these interrogatories went to the heart of the action and supported our motion for summary judgment, and that is why Public Counsel wanted so desperately to avoid answering. The court saw through Public Counsel's ridiculous claims as to why they could not answer the questions, ordered them to do so, and sanctioned the firm and its client.

[Update] We give credit where credit is due. As set forth above, the case against our client was both unfounded and procedurally improper. Public Counsel spent untold time trying to overcome the procedural defects in order to keep the action alive. To assist in that effort, it solicited the aid of the UCLA Law School, which made us question what is being taught at that school, if it would use such a clearly inappropriate case as a teaching tool. However, to the school's credit, after a short involvement with the matter, it removed itself from the case. For their part, the remaining firms -- Public Counsel and Latham & Watkins -- apparently refused to accept that UCLA had done the right thing, and continued to list UCLA as co-counsel on court documents.

[Update] The day of reckoning arrived for Public Counsel and the plaintiff. We performed a routine records check and discovered that the plaintiff in this action had filed for bankruptcy just days before he filed the complaint. That made the action an asset of the bankruptcy estate (which plaintiff did not list in his petition) and stripped plaintiff of his standing to pursue the action. We brought a motion for judgment on the pleadings, which was granted by the Superior Court despite vigorous opposition by Public Counsel and Latham & Watkins. These firms then took the matter to the bankruptcy court, seeking to have the case abandoned by the trustee, so that plaintiff could regain standing. Ironically, to make the argument that the matter should be abandoned by the trustee, plaintiff's counsel had to argue that the case was virtually worthless. But under the doctrine of "judicial estoppel," if they had been successful in having the case abandoned back to the plaintiff, they would have been prevented from seeking anything but nominal damages in the state court action, based on their own representation that plaintiff had suffered only nominal damages. At the hearing, plaintiff's counsel stepped up to the microphone and contritely withdrew the motion to have the case abandoned to the plaintiff.

[Update] Once we stripped the action from the plaintiff and took Public Counsel out of the equation, logic and civility prevailed. The action was dismissed against our client.

[Update -- April 18, 2006] Of the three Public Counsel attorneys that worked on this case, Robyn C. Smith and Kenneth W. Babcock are no longer with Public Counsel, and Janet D. Lewis is no longer an active member of the California Bar. We applaud their choices.

[May 15, 2000 -- Costa Mesa] 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.

[May 11, 2001 -- Santa Ana] 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.