Kohn v Piccinini San Mateo County Superior Court Case Number 19-CIV-01251.


From the court's tentative ruling and online county case records it is Lawzilla's understanding the following occurred:

Attorney Hazel Chang is an attorney with Wilshire Law Firm representing the plaintiff in a motor vehicle auto accident case.




After representing the plaintiff for less than a year she filed a motion to withdraw as counsel.

The court record indicates the motion was not opposed.

However, the judge denied the motion.

Two reasons were given by the court.

First, Hazel Chang, Esq., failed to use a mandatory court form for the withdrawal request.

Second, attorney Chang failed to "provide sufficient proof that the moving papers were served" on her client.




The docket for the case indicates that the tentative ruling was confirmed by the judge as the final order of the court after a hearing on the matter was held.

In our opinion, making an unopposed motion to withdraw as counsel in a case should be one of the easiest requests a lawyer makes.

Forms supplied by the court are completed and served on the client.

When an attorney cannot do this basic task and loses the request, we wonder ...

If can attorney cannot be competent with this simple motion, how would we expect her to succeed on important motions aggressively opposed by another attorney?

Reviewing the court file, it appears attorney Hazel Chang filed her motion on November 4th with a hearing date on Monday, December 23rd.

Merry Christmas!

We suspect the judge was not really excited to be dealing with Chang's improper motion.

On Friday, December 20th, possibly after reading the judge's tentative ruling, Hazel Chang tried to fix her problem by preparing a declaration on the proper court form.




Then she had it mailed to opposing counsel but did not serve her client!




LOL.

In other words, after learning she had failed to use the right form and failed to prove there was proper proof of service on her client, her office:

- MAILED a new form the business day before the 9:00 am hearing. There was obviously little to no chance anyone would receive it before the hearing.

- Did NOT serve her client.

Wow.

Does this reek of attorney incompetence or what?

After the judge said the motion lacked required proof of service on her client, she filed a new form - but did not serve it on her client!

If you are looking to retain an attorney you will have to ask yourself if this is the attorney you want to aggressively pursue your case and look out for your interests.

Based on this ruling and what we saw in the court file we would definitely pass on attorney Hazel Chang and the Wilshire Law Firm.

Hazel Chang was admitted to the California Bar in 2010. Bar Number 271840.

Hazel Chang Law PC
3055 Wilshire Boulevard, Floor 12
Los Angeles, California 90010

Law School: Golden Gate University