Robert Patrick Sticht, Esq #138586

Mr. Robert Sticht was actually recommended by a friend who had successfully used Mr. Sticht to negotiate a contract. He told me that even though Mr. Sticht took a sizable portion of the negotiated amount, but he was still satisfied as, without his negotiations, he would not have made any of the money.

So, here I was, on a rebound from an encounter with a completely incompetent lawyer whom I had fired because he played right into the hand of the adversary, when I met my new attorney, Mr. Robert Patrick Sticht, Esquire.

Had it not been for the recommendation I would have probably turned around. It was a bit strange that Mr. Sticht met with me for our first meeting in a coffee shop. He was a well dressed man of small stature but confident demeanor.

Initially I thought that the fact he met me in a coffee shop, instead of showing off his office, the fact that did not have an office at all, and the fact that his mailing address was mailbox was actually the smart way to do business, and I thought that I would get a more frugal lawyer, and one who was aware of privacy issues and protected his own very nicely.

Did not think at that time that the reason for all this was that he might actually have to hide something.

Let me give you first all the information that I have about him. It is a few years old so it might not be correct any more. But for anybody who might want to track him down it can be a start.

Email: lorps@verizon.net

Mobile Phone: (310) 890-1062
Work Phone: (310) 889-1950
Work Fax: (310) 889-1864

The following address might look like a real address but is a private mailbox place:
149 S. Barrington #248
Los Angeles, California  90049

For his official address, the one, for example with the California Bar, he does not hide that it is just a post office box:
P.O. Box 49457
Los Angeles CA 90049

One thing that surprised me positively in the beginning was that he started work without being paid right away. We agreed on a retainer of ten thousand dollar, but it took me a few days to get the money together, yet he started to work on the case right away. I thought that was showing real engagement because the previous lawyer would not do anything before he had the money in his hand. His money seemed to be the most important element of the case, but Robert Sticht seemed different.

That idea was brutally crushed when I saw his first bill, though – but more about this a bit later.

All this happened in the first half of May, so as soon as Mr. Sticht had our documents and we agreed on working together, we got the engagement letters signed for all the parties involved I got the 10 k$ and wired them to to our new attorney. I also got the file from the previous lawyer and delivered it to Mr. Sticht.

At that time we had done a lot of legal research ourselves with the help of a friend who understands the law probably better than most (good) lawyers. It was clear from this research that the essential part of the claim of the plaintiff (the IRS) was time-barred. Mr., Sticht had agreed, when we engaged him, that he would be open to unconventional approaches. We needed that because in a case like ours, the mighty US government suing the little man, that little man is supposed to cave in and just try to minimize the damage. To actually win, we needed something more than collegiality of an attorney towards the government attorney in order to be beaten up as painless as possible. Thus we delivered the research we had done in form of a motion to dismiss the case to Mr. Sticht with all the quotation of law that made the case very clear.

Initially Mr. Sticht appeared to be working in a way he was supposed to: finding legal arguments that would throw out the case before it really began – simply because it was filed too late. After submitting our legal research to him and discussing it with him on the phone he wrote in an email:

As discussed by telephone, the fact that the trust acquired title before the tax lien was recorded is not in my view directly relevant to the question whether the statute of limitations on the fraudulent conveyance action was timely.

Upon further reflection, I think a better argument runs something like this. There are two statutes of limitations. See Cal Civ Code Sections 3439.09(a) and (c). Under (c), the government filed its case on 9/5/07, which is more than 7 years after the alleged fraudulent transfers were made on 9/1/98 and 12/17/99. Under (a), the filing date 9/5/07 is also more than 4 years after both transfers. In such instance, subsection (a) allows the action to be filed within 1 year after the transfer was, or reasonably could have been, discovered by the creditor. So the two questions are (1) when were the transfers actually discovered by the govt and (2) what is the earliest date when both transfers “reasonably could have been discovered” by the govt? If the transfers reasonably could have been discovered before 9/5/06, i.e., 1 year prior to the actual filing date, then the action is arguably untimely under 3439.09(a). Here, the govt admits in the complaint that it filed a notice a federal tax lien against nominees on 6/6/03. This suggests the govt actually discovered the transfers more than 4 years before it filed the action. Accordingly, the action appears untimely.

So what exception do you think the govt is relying upon to file the case outside the statute of limitations set forth in the CA UFTA?

So, it appeared he understood the law there and started adding to our own research. Initially his last remark did not disturb me too much, but looking back this must have been the beginning of Mr. Sticht realizing that if this would be so easy, he would make hardly any money. The most obvious answer would have been that the government either does not care too much what the law says, or that they just did sloppy work and missed it.

Mr. Sticht then did the unimaginable: he, more or less, sent our arguments to the opposing attorney and asked her for her position! The answer was clear – no, you are wrong and if you file a motion like this we will call that frivolous and will ask the court for sanctions against you. Here is the redacted answer he got from the assistant US attorney…

This letter alone should have raised many red flags – if the government brings the ‘frivolous’ argument that usually means that it just got caught red-handed. Instead Mr. Sticht considered this answer as proof that she was right and our research, which included to decisions of the court of appeals of our circuit deciding for the defendant in very similar cases, was wrong.

It has become pretty clear since then, that Mr. Sticht’s strategy was to get us out of his hair with our strange ideas of getting this case dismissed quickly without much work on his side and he used the opposing attorney to show us that our research was not valid. Instead of finding arguments in support of the research, he instead went into overdrive preparing the case for trial. He was much more interested in producing as many billable hours as possible – and just a few days later we got first confirmation for that. Here is an excerpt of his email…

ABCDE (our previous lawyer) did not maintain a list of discovery documents, nor a discovery file, nor provide a calendar of deadlines in his transmittal letter dated May 14.  The letter contains few specifics.  Accordingly, I spent extra unplanned time organizing the discovery.

I will be spending even more time analyzing, reviewing, and studying the Government’s complaint, the answer that ABCDE filed on behalf of all defendants, the Government’s discovery requests, and the first set of special interrogatories and document requests that ABCDE prepared.  Any deficiencies should be caught and corrected now.

The Government has scheduled 4 days of depositions.  Additional time will have to be allowed for preparing the four defendants.

I will be talking to AUSA Ford about the statute of limitations issue.  If appropriate, I will file a motion to dismiss the fraud count.

I am also planning on scanning and emailing to you a full set of the Government’s interrogatories and document requests.  I need your assistance in preparing responses.

In the meantime, you should be assembling for me copies of the documents that I have requested in order to reconstruct the purchase, mortgage payments, debts between the parties, etc.

You should also prepare now to send me additional funds for this case.

So, in just a few days Mr. Sticht had used up 10 kilo dollars!

In our initial talk he had mentioned a maximum cost of $50,000 as cost for the defense of the case as a very remote possibility. At $10,000 after a few days without anything really happening these $50,000 suddenly did not seem so remote any longer. Obviously we wanted to know now how these $10,000 had been spend and I requested an invoice.

It look a long time until we finally got to see how our money had been spent, two month to be precise. The previous lawyer had just been incompetent but very open with the fees he charged us. We had very promptly received monthly bills even though no payment was required. As soon as we saw Mr. Sticht’s bill it was immediately clear why he had withheld sending us a bill so long. He had, as quickly as he could, raked up as many billable hours as possible, thus defrauding us. Had he sent an invoice for the first month right away we would have stopped him much quicker and he would not have been able to extract all this money.

We also were used from the previous lawyer that administrative work was billed at a much lower rate for an assistant or para-legal. But as Mr. Sticht did not have any staff he charged us any administrative work he had done himself at his full ‘professional’ rate. Suddenly it made a lot of sense that he did not have a secretary. On reading Robert Sticht’s invoice I wondered why he had not billed us for writing this invoice.

Receiving this over-blown invoice, together with an email a bit earlier titled LAST WORD, in which he clearly stated that he would not file our motion that would have ended the case and saved us huge expenses, I actually went back to snail mail to send Mr. Sticht a clarification regarding our roles.

Very interesting the (redacted) answer to this letter:

Gggggg and Hhhhhh:

I have in hand Gggggg’s July 9 letter (copy attached).  Here’s my reply.

1.  You stress that you and Hhhhhh, because you are “the bosses”, do not work for me.  You fail to mention that you have a duty to cooperate with me in my representation of you.  It’s important that you understand that fulfilling your duty to cooperate with my representation of you does not mean you work for me.

2.  You’ve asked whether “the last decision what is to be done lies with us, correct?”  Correct.  Here, let me clarify that the subject line “Final Word” meant “My Final Word” not “I Have The Final Word.”  If this is causing you concern, then I’m glad for the opportunity to clarify.

3.  You accused me of refusing to file a motion for summary judgment that was prepared by a research friend who is not a lawyer, stalling, and going into “an intensely expensive work of drafting the answer to the government’s discovery.”  As a reminder, you are required to comply with the rules of civil procedure regarding discovery.  If you had not complied, you would have invited the government to file a motion to compel you to comply and order you to pay sanctions.  Thus, noncompliance would have been twice the work, more than twice the expense, and ultimately unproductive.  (It would have been more than twice the expense because you would have to pay for responding to the motion to compel and to the discovery demands plus pay the government’s fees for seeking an order to make you comply.)  The actual expense of complying was very reasonable.  Count yourselves fortunate that you are not so experienced as to be the best judge of what’s reasonable.  And more than simply comply, the work advanced your cause, helped us prepare for your depositions, and achieved other benefits, such as reviewing, organizing, and marking voluminous exhibits.

4.  I did refuse to file the motion for summary judgment prepared by your nonlawyer friend.  I did so on good authority.  Here the United States is acting in its sovereign capacity.  That’s a major obstacle.  You haven’t shown me a way around that obstacle.  I agreed to review the draft motion, review the cases cited therein, and update you with my findings.  But not at the expense of your noncompliance with your discovery obligations on the ownership issue.  I advised you that that you could avoid your discovery obligations by conceding the ownership issue and pursuing the procedural limitations issue as your sole defense.  I also advised you that course of action would save you money.  You did not instruct me to concede the ownership issue.

5.  I did not request courtesy copies of the cases cited in your friend’s motion for summary judgment in order to stall filing the motion.  I did so to avoid charging you for researching those cases, which presumably you already have at your disposal.

6.  Similarly, I tasked your friend to do some research to cut costs and advance the case, not to send you on a “goose chase” as you accuse me of doing.  For example, it is not a “goose chase” to research whether an oral trust with respect to real property, which is evidenced by deeds, trust assignments, and other writings, is enforceable under the circumstances of this case.  Nor is it a “goose chase” to examine other possible legal theories that may exist to fill (possible) gaps in your evidence.  And it was you who suggested in one of your emails that I could do research on the fast and cheap, not me.

7.  You state that the “work performed to answer the discovery was totally unnecessary had the brief been filed.”  You’re entitled to your opinion.  Your opinion disagrees with mine.  I stand by my advice.  Your motion would not halt the proceedings as you suggest.  In paragraph 2 near the end of your letter, you state that this advice “has been found to be false.”  Your letter does not state how you found it to be false.  Without offering me more than your bald accusation that my advice was false, I’m unwilling to change my opinion.

8.  You accuse me of being intimidated by Ford’s opinion that a statute of limitations argument in this case would be frivolous.  To the contrary, I have offered to review and consider your friend’s legal memorandum.  If I find there is any merit to it, I will not hesitate to help you put it into a form which is suitable for my signature.  As I have said before, Ford’s input is educating, not intimidating, because it signals where she stands on the issue today.

9.  You “demand again that you file our motion for summary judgment, as we have presented it to you … by latest Tuesday July 15, 2008.”  For all the reasons previously stated, I am unable to comply with this demand.  Look at it this way.  Under Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b) (copy attached), the act of signing a motion certifies to the court that to the best of the attorney’s knowledge, information, and belief, formed after a reasonable inquiry under the circumstances, the legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law, or for establishing new law.  If the court determines this rule has been violated, it may sanction the attorney and/or party responsible for the violation.  Knowing this rule, it should give you pause and cause for concern that I am unwilling to sign your friend’s motion “as we have presented it to you.”  Perhaps, I’m correct that as it stands now, the legal contentions are not warranted by law.  At the same time, it should offer you great relief that I am even willing to review and consider the motion from the standpoint of whether the arguments therein can be turned into legal contentions that are warranted by existing law or by nonfrivolous arguments for extending or establishing new law.  You and Hhhhh are “the bosses” who “make the last decision what is to be done.”  But you do not have a right to demand that I lend my signature to motions that I might not otherwise sign, simply because they make sense to you the bosses.

10.  With all due respect to you, Ggggg, your paragraph 1 at the end of your letter is petty nonsense.  Your paragraph 2 at the end of the letter has already been answered above.  I stand behind my invoice because it’s accurate and fair.

Of course, we’ve covered these subjects in great detail in previous communications, so you may wish to re-read them in light of this exchange.

The pressure of the expense of this case is understandable.  I had hoped to prepare you for such pressure when I advised you at the outset to plan on spending upwards of $50k even before I saw the file.  I don’t mind your ventilating such pressure.  The expense, however, is not due to anything I’ve done.  It’s for your legal defense of what’s been done by you in the past.  You did not involve me then.  It’s unreasonable to burden me now.  I’m here to defend you the best way I know how.  You’re aiming at the wrong target.

Your conclusion states that you hope continued work on this case is still possible.  I’m deeply disappointed that you do not recognize anywhere in your letter the value of my work, or having my qualifications on your team, or the personal attention and service that you’ve received from me.  You now know my position on the two issues raised in your letter.  Let me know how you wish to proceed.

Robert Patrick Sticht

He is, I have to concede, a pretty slick lawyer, but under a bit of scrutiny it is clearly visible that this is an attempt to whitewash the simple fact of refusal to file a motion that would have ended the case with expenses of a few hundred dollars. For example a motion to dismiss would have held discovery and siding with the opposing council and agreeing that a decision of the Appeals Court is ‘frivolous’ so that many billable hours can be charged is clearly fraudulent.

I wonder why it would be important that this friend who did the legal research is not a lawyer – if not an attempt to ‘divide and conquer.’

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Barak Lurie – Conflict of Interest

After I had signed up with this web site to report my experience with Barak Lurie I waited for a week to allow Google to find my write-up and index it. I then started my search for ‘Barak Lurie‘ on Google to see how well my articles fared in relation to the information Mr. Lurie wants the internet to disseminate about him.

I found my findings still only way down on page four of the results, but that was not too bad as these pages were just a few days old while the presence Mr. Lurie had created must have taken a lot more effort.

But I found out something else very interesting: Barak Lurie was running for Congress[A]!

I found the first sentence very interesting: “My name is Barak Lurie, and I am running for Congress. I will win.” But when I checked the current list of California representatives I could not find him. Did he make a promise that he could not keep?

But I don’t want to get sidetracked, what is most important, is the fact that he wanted to be paid by the government. He wanted to get money out of the bag that is filled by the IRS. And  he offered to defend me against a claim of the IRS. If that is not a conflict of interest then I don’t know what one would be.

OK, he was not running for congress when I hired him, but how likely is it that somebody out of the blue decided so become a politician and run for congress? The way to congress is usually a long one with many years of working up to the nearly highest level of a political career. It might be just circumstantial evidence, but evidence nevertheless that during the time he accepted to defend me against the IRS he had already set his mind to the goal to be paid by the agency that he accepted to defend me against.

This is highly unethical, to say the least!

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Barak Lurie – Handling the Arbitration

So, Barak Lurie had started the arbitration in front of the Beverly Hills Bar Association. Now some thoughts that went through my head: When I had demanded my money back he had played real hard-ball – calling it extortion and me a criminal, and that he would never give in to such a ‘vinegar’ approach.

I had long worked with Japanese and I thought maybe there is something going on that can be handled with the Japanese metaphor “losing face.” Mr. Lurie could not just give in now and write a check, but if there was something external that says he should give the money back, that would be a good way out without losing face. As my intention still was just to get my money back, without any vendetta, I decided to play along. I invested the time to write my answer to his claim and mailed it into the Beverly Hills Bar Association. Wheels apparently turn slowly over there as it took weeks to get a meeting scheduled but it was finally set for February 8, 2011.

I had no illusions of any unbiased arbitration in front of one or more lawyers when going against one of their peers – I played along to allow Lurie to save face and make my chances of getting my money back maybe a little bit bigger.

February 8 came and I battled morning traffic into Beverly Hills, was there in time with even 10 minutes to spare. I announced myself and learned that there is no arbitration scheduled for today. Hmm – did I make a mistake? Fortunately I had the document with me and we verified that it should be today. A phone call later and Elaine came in who is apparently in charge of scheduling arbitrations and showed me the following printout of an email…

email to elaine canceling arbitration - Click for Larger

In order to make this easier to read and for Google to index it, here the text of the email:

From: Barak Lurie [barak@lurie-law.com]
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2011 5:54 PM
To: Elaine XXXXXX (withheld)
Subject: [name withheld] matter

Hi, Elaine: I hope you are well! I think that I have an arbitration that I will be chairing shortly in the middle of the month. I’m really looking forward to it.

Separately, we had scheduled an arbitration in the above matter ([name withheld]) for February 8. As my associate just informed you by way of voicemail, it turns out that Mr. [name withheld] has filed for bankruptcy a couple of months ago. That means that we cannot pursue this arbitration. And wouldn’t you know he didn’t bother telling us? It was just dumb luck that we found out about this at 5:00 PM today (Friday). My associate Michele happened to stumble upon this while looking up some other matters.

In any event, we also left a voicemail with Mr. Locke about this. But I just want to inform you, in case you wanted to let him know as well.

Thanks, and all the best.

Barak Lurie
LURIE & ASSOCIATES
11766 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 700
Los Angeles, CA 90025
T: 310-478.7788
F: 310-347-4442
Barak@lurie-law.com
www.lurie-law.com

Speaking of dumb – does Mr. Lurie really think that Elaine is so dumb to believe that he runs into that information the last possible Minute to cancel that meeting without the Bar Association unable to contact me to tell me about it? He sent that email the last Minute before the weekend and is (most likely) well aware that Elaine is not in the office on Mondays and will receive that email when I am already at the office for my appointment.

And what about the facts? Hey, I have filed for bankruptcy protection, but Mr. Lurie was not named as a creditor, in other words his claim was not part of the bankruptcy so his argument for canceling has no merit.

Nevertheless, I now have to assume that my assessment of his motivation for starting  the arbitration was wrong. Or was it just cheap revenge for me publishing these web pages?

Going down to Beverly Hills today all in vain might have set me back time-wise a little bit but I learned something valuable, very well worth the time invested: this email to Elaine that I can not image Mr. Lurie would have wanted me to see. So, he is one of the arbitrators himself, so I am even more sure now that a non-lawyer would have no chances of getting a fair treatment in front of that body.

That might be true also for the California Bar Association, but after being stood up intentionally I really think that I will have to file my official complaint with the Bar, something I held off for so long to allow Barak Lurie to come to his senses and just give me my money back. I guess he must be really strapped for money to take that risk.

My money back is indeed all I want – no damages, no penalty, just the money I have him for something he did not do.

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Barak Lurie – Handling a Refund Request

After Barak Lurie and co-council had made no progress in solving the case but used up $15,000 in fees nevertheless and now asked for another five kilo dollars my co-defendant and I decided to look for another lawyer.

Don’t know about this new lawyer’s motivation but when he looked over what had been done, he more or less said we should ask for out money back. As this only confirmed out own assessment of the situation we wrote a polite email to Mr. Lurie, asking for a return of out money.

The reaction? – Nothing, nada, zilch, null!

Things got exciting and hectic and we were not able to follow up on our demand. Don’t think we would have been able to take on another fight on a different front while fighting the five-hundred pound gorilla called the DOJ.

But when things calmed down somewhat – they are still not over – we renewed our demand about a year later. As it was obvious, from our previous experience that Barak Lurie would not just agreed with us, we added a bit more urgency into our demand by drafting a bar complaint and told Mr. Lurie that we would go public with our experiences with him.

The reply was interesting:

… You should understand that your written letter (which you actually signed) constitutes extortion, a criminal offense. Posting libelous statements on the Internet would also place you in a precarious legal position.

Mr. [withheld], I do not respond well to threats. Had you simply contacted me and discussed this matter, we could certainly talk. Nevertheless, your “vinegar” approach to dealing with me does not work, and I suspect does not work well with other people. I have reviewed the file and none of the accusations you make have merit.

Moreover, you owe this firm more than $3300, which I have not pursued up to this point. Even if you had a viable claim for malpractice (which you do not), it has now expired. The statute of limitations for any such claim passed a year after we substituted out as counsel, and that was now over 1-1/2 years ago….

But, but, but, Mr. Lurie – we did ask kindly and you just ignored us. I suppose you knew that at that time we would not be able to pursue our demands, right?

And extortion? I believe that was the chain rattling because in later communication you were educated by us that this was called a ‘settlement offer’ and dropped the pretense that you really thought that this was extortion. Otherwise most negotiations would have to be renamed extortion.

As I was only interested in getting our money back, not really wanting to pursue a payment for damages, and definitely not interested in destroying his livelihood, I continued to converse with Mr. Lurie trying to reach a settlement.

But instead he actually started an arbitration (which was covered in our engagement contract) to collect the amount he claimed we owed him. He had once threatened me (wonder if this extortion too) that he would start to collect this money should I dare to file my bar complaint or post anything on the internet.

Sorry, but as he has now initiated the process of collecting his claim I thought that I should tell the world about my experience, exercising my first amendment rights.

I don’t really understand what Mr. Lurie’s motivation here could be. I would have settled for twelve kilo dollars. Is he really that short in cash that he risks his livelihood for that small amount of money?

There is one more snippet from his answer to my second attempt to get my money back that I just have to share because it is just too indicative of a person who just takes credit wherever he can (without actually delivering anything)…

I do note that you and your wife actually had a good result at the end of the day, reducing liabilities that you were facing from the IRS in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to only $27,000 each. … I do not see, therefore, how you can possibly argue that our representation harmed you. (I understand that you assert you obtained this result by yourself, but that is not relevant.)

What Barak Lurie is referring to is the following. After I had fired him and tried one more attorney I went into the case by myself as pro se. One of the first actions was to sit together with the assistant district attorney, something that should have been done at the very beginning of the case as ordered by the court but disregarded by two attorneys and the government. The government attorney was very reasonable and I could easily convince him that I could not possible owe more taxes for the two years in question than I had actually made. These are the ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’ Mr. Lurie is referring to. It took two days with my paperwork and an IRS agent to find out that after expenses I would have had a tax liability of  about $ 10,000 which  had accumulated to the 55,000 with interest and penalties (the government had waited 8 years to sue me to run up the tab a little bit more.)

So, it was I as a layman who did this job of cutting down the initial claim of the government. Mr. Lurie had just run up his own tab without accomplishing anything – just the opposite. Had I not fired him he would have let me run into the open knife. And now he tells me that I did good so he did no harm – yes he did – he cost me 15 kilo Dollars – he ripped me off by pretending to be a specialist in an area where he had no clue. This is called ‘adding insult to injury.’

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Barak Lurie – State Bar No. 144887

My name is Peter Smith (changed) and I hired Barak Lurie (Facebook|LinedIn) to represent me in a case that did not appear to be too difficult as it should have been time-barred. The main issue of this case was that the government had accused me of a fraudulent transfer of real estate into a trust some eight years ago.

Mr. Lurie had been recommended to me as somebody who could handle this not quite run-of-the-mill government case, and he confirmed during our first meeting that he had the expertise to handle the issues involved and told me that he was actually a specialist in fraudulent transfer cases.

He also confirmed that on its face this case should be time-barred. In his favor I have to admit that he told me that it had happened that he had been wrong – but still he was rather confident that from all he knew the statute of limitations had expired. At that statement I should have left the office together with my money, but he actually made a good impression on me, seemed honest (to admit that so freely) and stressed that it “[was] a pleasure to work with me.”

So I hired him and paid a retainer and shorty thereafter a second one when my co-defendant came on board as well – 10 kilo Dollars together. At that time I thought that I would get most of that money back as soon as Mr. Lurie had informed the government of its mistake.

As I am reporting all this here it is obvious that it all did not turn out this way. We had to fire him another 15 thousand dollars later when it became clear that he and his two co-conspirators – Paul L. Gumina (State Bar No. 160110) and Jennifer B. Gardner (State Bar No. 128026) – were totally incapable to handle this case and actually played into the hand of the plaintiff, admitting things left and right that were not only incorrect but totally unnecessary and would have certainly made us lose the case.

The following is the bar complaint that we drafted describing our accusations.

==== Beginning of Bar Complaint Draft ====

The law office of Barak Lurie (sometimes hereafter “BL”) accepted representation of me, [name withheld]y, on Oct 15, 2007.

Mr. Lurie, during the initial interview and in later email messages told me that he had the legal expertise to handle the complex tax and fraudulent transfer issues involved in this case. He further stated that he would use outside counsel for issues outside of areas ofsupposed expertise. On its face the case was time barred, at least for the third cause of action, which was a claim of fraudulent transfer against Alpha Beta Gamma Trust for a transfer made by me in 1998.  As there is an absolute claims extinguishment period of seven years under the California UFTA, Civil Code section 3439.09, while the government did not initiate its fraudulent transfer case until nine years later in 2007, the case could have been easily won with a dispositive motion.

[Footnote: The government initiated suit under the California UFTA because the statute of limitations under federal law is six years. Please see the Federal Debt Collections Procedures Act, 28 U.S.C. 3001 et seq. Please see 28 U.S.C. 3306(b).
Nor did, or could, the government invoke the Internal Revenue Code (“IRC”) against the trust by sending it a notice of deficiency under IRC 6901(a), which they would have had to have done within four years of the date I filed my tax returns for tax years 1995 and 1996.  Or in other words, they would have had to have sent the second notice no later than the year 2001, as my 1996 return was, of course, filed in the year 1997.  To date, they never sent such a notice, and in 2001 it became too late.  Hence, the government decided to sue under the California UFTA.]

Instead of filing a dispositive motion, and performing the legal research to back such a motion, Barak Lurie instead filed a nonmeritorious motion for a more definite statement,which was not only unsuccessful, but he charged me thousands of dollars for this disservice. This motion was denied because plaintiff US Department of Justice answered all questions in the reply to the motion.  In other words, the need for a motion could have easily been avoided by a few phone conversations and e-mails.  BL never contacted opposing counsel regarding the sought after information before filing it, and once it was filed, plaintiff readily disclosed all information sought.  Had BL merely contacted opposing counsel first, which is what any competent attorney would do, the expense of the motion could have been avoided.  Of course, Barak Lurie was not looking to minimize expences.  No, BL was looking for ways to come up with as many billable hours as possible in order to increase its own profits – whether or not it was in my best interests.

Furthermore, Barak Lurie failed to bring up the fact that the administrative lien recorded by the government against the trust in 2003 was illegal because the procedure required by IRC 6901 had not been followed, and there is no other procedure in the IRC permitting an administrative lien to be recorded.  Furthermore, BL totally missed the point that the government had sued under the California UFTA and that therefore the entire claim had been extinguished as it had not been brought within the absolute extinguishment period of seven years.  Barak Lurie demonstrated total ignorance on these issues after selling himself to me as a “specialist” in fraudulent transfers and real estate law.

During the time of drafting the motion for a more definite statement, the government inquired with Barak Lurie regarding another named defendant, Sunland Financial Services (“SFS”), who had the biggest stake in the case – a lien recorded in the year 2000 that, with interest, was worth approximately five hundred thousand dollars ($500,000.00), which is more than the property was worth at the time (and certainly more than it’s worth now).  If that lien is upheld, then there will be no equity for plaintiff, irrespective of the timeliness of its claim.  Mr. Lurie had been informed by me that I had all the contact information for this defendant.

Barak Lurie acknowledged the receipt of the inquiry to the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and answered that it would reply shortly.  But BL neither responded to the inquiry of the government, nor did he inform me of the inquiry so that I could supply the requested information, which, again, I had told BL was in my possession.  Because of his complete disregard of this issue, the government did not learn about the contact information of SFS, which allowed it to pursue and obtain an order for service by publication and then a default judgment against SFS.  Had Barak Lurie not behaved in this negligent manner, this result would not have occurred because the government would have had to personally serve SFS.  This is especially significant because, in January, 2009, Alpha Beta Gamma Trust (“ABG”) filed a bankruptcy petition.  In response, the government filed a motion for relief from the automatic stay, but, because SFS is a foreign trust with a foreign address, the government was not able to property serve it, ultimately forcing the government to withdraw its motion.  As the same group of  DOJ attorneys is representing the government in both cases, one would reasonably conclude that this same conclusion would have been reached, and the government would have lost its case, had Barak Lurie simply given the government the contact information it requested for SFS, or at least told me that they were requesting it so that I could give it to them directly.  If he had done so, and things went the way they went in the bankruptcy court, the government would have lost then as it wouldn’t have been able to bring SFS (who is first lienholder) within the jurisdiction of the court.

Another problem is that, while Barak Lurie told me that he would be the lead attorney on the case, the actual attorney whom he delegated it to was Paul Gumina, whom I never had a chance to meet, much less interview, prior to BL suddenly appointing him as my attorney.  I hired Barak Lurie solely because he assured me that he would be personally representing me.  If he had wanted another attorney to take a leading role (or in this case,the leading role), then he had an obligation to inform me before I hired him, and not wait until after I signed the retainer agreement and paid him.

In any event, Paul Gumina left the law offices of Barak Lurie after the motion for more definite statement had been filed.  I did not learn about the fact of his resignation (or dismissal) until after several unanswered inquiries regarding the progress of the case to Mr. Gumina remained unanswered.  This caused me extreme emotional distress as none of my e-mails came back (i.e. bounced), but two weeks passed without any kind ofresponse.  Finally, I learned that a Jennifer Gardner had just been assigned to the case as the replacement for Mr. Gumina.

Mr. Lurie admitted that he had “forgotten” to inform me that the attorney handling my case had left the firm.  Neither had Gumina done so.  While two weeks may not seem like a long time, I can assure you that, when the IRS is suing you to take away the house you live in, when the case is active, and the attorney you hire ignores you for two solid weeks, two weeks is an extremely long time.

Their behavior was more than just unprofessional and negligent.  It amounted to a reckless disregard of my interests as a client, causing me extreme emotional pain and suffering. Apparently the other attorney, Jennifer Gardner, was hired by Barak Lurie and spent (billed) time trying to understand the case.  As it wasn’t my fault that Mr. Gumina left the firm, it was wrong of them to bill me for the time Ms. Gardner spent to get up to speed. If anything, they should have refunded or credited money to me for the time they wasted with their personnel change.  In any event, BL never represented to me that he would assign the case to other attorneys, much less that he would assign it and re-assign the case at his pleasure, and charge him for the hours spent each time a new attorney was assigned.  Indeed, he completely misrepresented his involvement in the case, and I only hired him based upon him telling me that he would personally represent me.  He should have disclosed to me that other attorneys would be doing virtually all of the work on the case. However, this is not just an issue of assignment.  An even bigger issue is the poor job Ms. Gardner did with the assignment.  Her first attempt to answer the complaint was so bad and so wrong that ABG certainly would have lost the case because it played right into plaintiff’s hands.  I, a non-attorney with no legal training, spotted the main errors and brought them to their attention.  Barak Lurie had, due to the office’s internal friction, lost so much time that I had to constantly pester them to get the reply filed, but still the answer was filed late.

Following is a review of the draft answer prepared by Ms. Gardner to show the incompetence and malpractice with which it was drafted.  (I have included a copy of her answer so that the paragraphs can be compared side-by-side to my comments below.) The review will be confined to those paragraphs where her answer was insufficient:

ad 2. The government alleges that, “This action is being commenced… at the direction of the Attorney General of the United States and with the authorization of the Chief Counsel of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a delegate of the Secretary of the Treasury.”  There is no reason to admit these unproven allegations.  Many times government actors don’t actually comply with all the requisite formalities. We are looking to win the case any way we can, so how does it benefit me to not deny these allegations, thereby forcing the government to prove its compliance? Moreover, it’s often possible to force actual agency heads to testify when the question of their authorisation or involvement is challenged.  As these references are to high-ranking officials, compelling them to testify would greatly inconvenience the government, making them more likely to settle or just lose the case.  So again, what was the benefit to me in admitting their unproven allegations?

ad 4. The allegation that Defendant Sunland Financial Services (“SFS”) resides in the Central District of California is categorically false, and is one of the major acts of malpractice committing by Barak Lurie in this case.  I informed BL that SFS maintained its residence in Brazil (the “residence” of a trust estate being the residence of the trustee, who is currently a resident of Brazil).  As SFS is in first lien position, and there is no longer enough equity to satisfy SFS’s lien, putting the government into a position where it must serve SFS in Brazil could put us into a very good position to settle the case, or even to win it.  Nor is this just theory.  Eventually ABG filed for bankruptcy.  In response, the very same attorney representing the government filed a motion for relief from the stay.  Only this time, my new attorney did object that SFS wasn’t properly served.  The judge agreed and ordered personal service.  After several failed attempts, the government withdrew its motion.  Had BL paid heed to the information I provided to him, because the rules for service are the same in both district court and bankruptcy court, one would think that the government would be no more successful than they were in the bankruptcy case.  The worst part though is that BL didn’t even try.  No, BL just “admitted” that SFS is a resident of the Central District of California because of his negligent disregard for this case.

ad 6. It was malpractice for Barak Lurie to simply “admit” that my wife and I owed the alleged tax liabilities.  This was a major issue in the case as we had always disputed the amount of our alleged tax liabilities and claimed that the returns we filed for the years at issue, to wit, 1995 and 1996, were accurate.  As the other defendants were mere transferees, no claim could be made against them, including a claim against ABG as the owner of the subject property, except to the extent that a taxliability exists against myself and/or my wife.  Moreover, on my own, I was able to negotiate a settlement with the IRS reducing the tax liabilities from about $370,000@ to about $55,000.  How much better could I have done with acompetent attorney who would have put the IRS to its proof, instead of just “admitt[ing]” to the tax liability that underlies this case?

ad 7. What possible reason was there to not admit that SFS claims lien on the property? This is another core issue that, if resolved in SFS’s favor, would completely defeat its claim against the property as there would be no remaining equity.

ad 8-9. While a denial of this allegation may be in order, it’s not because of lack of information, but rather because ABG holds title to the property.  As any competent attorney would know, and especially one who represents himself as a“specialist” in real estate law, an “owner” is not the same as a “lienholder.”  Barak Lurie failed to show the competence level of a first year law student!

ad 12. It’s malpractice, plain and simple, for Barak Lurie to “admit” that myself and my wife have been assessed.  No evidence was offered, and frequently the IRS and other agencies don’t follow their own procedures.  In any event, why not put them to the proof?  What benefit is derived from just conceding the issue?

ad 14. The best that can be said about this paragraph of Barak Lurie’s response is that it’s poorly written, as my wife and I have consistently and strenuously maintained that we have paid all our federal tax liabilities for tax years 1995 and 1996 no later than the date that our returns for those years were filed, and that there is no outstanding balance.

ad 17. This should have been an outright denial, and an obvious one for a so-called “specialist” in real estate law.  The only authority of the IRS to record anadministrative lien against a transferee of a taxpayer is under IRC 6091.  That section can only be imposed by issuing a notice of deficiency to the transferee which accords to the transferee the opportunity to petition the tax court, and the burden of proof on the issue of transferee liability in any such proceeding will be on the IRS.  Should the IRS win the case, then it may record a lien even though there is no judicial judgment (because the tax court is an Article 1, and not an Article III, court, or in other words, it’s an administrative court).  Otherwise, there is no authority for a mere revenue agent or other IRS personnel to just record a lien.  This is crucial because no notice of deficiency was ever issued to either ABG or SFS in this case.  A competent attorney, who is familiar with the transferee liability rules of the Internal Revenue Code, would have immediately made this objection, but not BL.  The only conclusion is that Barak Lurie is not competent or not behaving competently, and either way, it’s malpractice.

ad 18. In this paragraph, Barak Lurie demonstrates that he simply wasn’t paying attention to what I was telling him from day one, which is that I was never the beneficial owner of the property.  Basically, I made an arrangement with [name wihheld] under which I would sign for the loan, service it in exchange for living in it (my rent), and transfer it to his trust: the Alpha Beta Gamma Trust.  As this would be how the case would be presented at trial, BL was spoiling the chances of making this presentation with BL’s unqualified admission to this paragraph, where BL asserts that my wife and I were owners, when it’s our contention that we were never beneficial owners.  If we were never beneficial owners, then we never transferred any equity, and so any fraudulent transfer claim – indeed, any claim against the property at all – must fail.

Another problem is Barak Lurie’s affirmative defence that IRS is barred by the statute of limitations.  This is not true.  Had BL had even basic knowledge of federal law on this point, BL would know that, nearly 70 years ago, the supreme court exempted the federal government from state statutes of limitations in United States v. Summerlin, 310 U.S.414, 1940.  However, the question has never been definitely settled about whether or not the federal government is subject to a state claims extinguishment (i.e. statute of repose)? The weight of authority and reasoning is that it is so subject, and two decisions from within the Ninth Circuit, that are precisely analogous to the facts of this case in that they both involved claims of the IRS against a delinquent taxpayer’s transferee’s real estate, so state.  Those cases are U.S. v. Vellalos, 780 F.Supp. 705, D. Hawaii, 1992, and United States v. Wright, 76 AFTR2d 95-7526, 7528, 96-1 USTC ¶ 50,005, 1995.  Had BL actually known anything about the applicability of state claims extinguishment provisions to the federal government, then he would have been aware of these two cases which are within the very federal circuit where BL practices. In sum, BL’s reply constitutes malpractice as it was obviously written by an attorney with no familiarity with the laws and legal principles involved in this case, and utterly unfamiliar with the factual theory of the case.  Or in other words, it’s malpractice. Barak Lurie also failed to follow up on the court order for arbitration in that he failed to contact the government in accordance with the court’s order.  This would have reduced this case from the initial claim of $370,000 to the current claim of $55,000 which was actually reached within two days by me personally, handling the case pro se.  It was obviously not in the interest of BL to speed up the case and minimize his billable hours.

==== End of Bar Complaint Draft ====

(The referenced answer to the complaint can be published on request.)

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