Real Estate Experience
- Secured a $11.2 million settlement in a complex dispute among members of a limited liability company involving the management, control, and ultimate sale of a 14-story office building in Encino, California.
- Successfully represented a commercial tenant of an industrial property in a breach of lease lawsuit. The landlord sought $10 million in damages but we settled the case for our client without any money owed to the landlord.
- Successful trial victory for the surviving spouse of a longtime real estate investor, in a high-stakes dispute involving two multimillion-dollar Bel Air properties. Following a six-day bench trial, the Court granted the defense’s motion for judgment in full after plaintiffs rested their case. The plaintiffs had sought more than $2.5 million in damages from the family trust that holds the properties. During the litigation, the defense team also successfully moved to expunge a lis pendens (a notice recorded to alert potential purchasers of a pending lawsuit) recorded against one of the properties and secured attorneys’ fees for the client. The Court’s decision brought a complete victory on the equitable claims and avoided the need for further proceedings.
- Successfully represented the buyers in a complex real estate dispute involving a multimillion-dollar condominium transaction in Santa Monica. The matter centered on the seller’s refusal to close under the terms of a signed California Residential Purchase Agreement, leading to an arbitration proceeding to protect our clients’ interests and enforce their contractual rights. Secured several significant procedural and discovery victories that strengthened the clients’ position and helped drive the matter toward resolution. On the first day of the arbitration hearing, the seller agreed to settle the matter before proceedings formally began, and the parties finalized a settlement agreement that same day.
- Successfully obtained a writ of attachment and then summary adjudication of all tenant’s defenses in commercial landlord-tenant dispute arising out of COVID-era health regulations.
- Obtained a court order directing the manager of a real estate LLC to distribute $16 million to our clients and to replace the manager with a neutral receiver to complete the dissolution and wind up of the LLC. We succeeded in preventing the controlling owners from withholding our clients’ rightful share of sale proceeds to extract concessions from our clients in the pending action alleging wrongful dissolution, breach of fiduciary duty and other claims against them.
- Obtained unanimous verdicts in 2+ week jury trial involving accusations of fraud, mismanagement, breach of fiduciary duty and breach of contract among members of a real estate joint venture. and successfully collected on clients’ seven figure judgment for damages and attorney’s fees.
- Successfully tried and defeated a breach of lease/exercise of option dispute filed by well-known restaurant chain against commercial landlord client while simultaneously obtaining judgment for possession, unpaid rent, property damage, fraud, and all attorney’s fees and costs (which were all fully collected after defeating tenant’s appeal).
- Settled, during trial, a dispute between limited partners and the general partners over terms of limited partnership agreement in a real estate development that included claims of mismanagement by the general partner.
- Successfully evicted Home Base after it invoked co-tenancy clause based on its own decision to “go dark” and then obtained seven figure settlement after initiating a breach of lease case and filing writ of attachment.
- Obtained summary judgment for current owner of commercial real estate against former owner declaring that current owner had acquired all property claims and proceeds from the foreclosing lender, thereby giving the current owner the right to recover funds and claims asserted by prior property owner in a pending legal action.
- Obtained summary judgment for an investor in a real estate partnership prohibiting another investor from seeking partition of several investment properties and recovered investor’s attorney’s fees and costs in settlement that followed.
