Traci Reynolds vs. Bruce Palmbaum

Summary: Attorney John Cassinat represents the plaintiff. The defendant moved to strike the lawsuit as an improper SLAPP complaint.

The judge agreed and awarded $12,130 in legal fees and costs against Cassinat's client.



From the Judge and Court File:

Attorney John Cassinat represents the plaintiff in this case.

After Cassinat filed the complaint the defendants moved to strike it as an improper SLAPP lawsuit

A "SLAPP" lawsuit, per our friends at Wikipedia, is a lawsuit intended to intimidate or censor critics based on something they said that is protected free speech.

To win the motion, defendants had to show the lawsuit Cassinat filed was based on constitutionally protected activity and lacks a genuine basis.

The plaintiff can defeat the motion by providing evidence showing a reasonable probability of winning the case.

In our view this evidence is something a competent attorney is expected to have before filing a lawsuit.

The judge in this case granted defendants SLAPP motion.

The question for this ruling was how much in legal fees and costs would be owed as a result for filing an improper lawsuit.

The judge said $12,310 was going to be awarded.

The defendant had sought about $20,000, but the judge reduced the attorney fee from $600 to $350 per hour. Cassinat was also able to get 30 minutes of time eliminated as not part of the SLAPP defense. The judge also agreed 7.5 hours were unreasonably spent.

From the court file we believe the tentative ruling became the Sacramento court's final ruling.



Lawzilla Commentary:

The SLAPP statute says the legal fee penalty is only imposed against the client. A judge cannot sanction the attorney, even if the attorney was at fault. In our opinion the attorney is almost always at fault because they are the one who prepared and filed the complaint, should know the law, and they should not be filing sanctionable lawsuits.

It is up to the client to make a malpractice claim against their attorney who files a SLAPP lawsuit.

We also wonder how much time Cassinat spent opposing the motion for fees and costs and whether it was well-spent time. For example, he challenged 5.4 hours of time as being unrelated to the SLAPP motion, but the judge only agreed 30 minutes was unrelated. But maybe this was on attorney Cassinat's nickel and he was not charging his client.



Joseph Mohamed vs. Pulte Home Corporation

Summary: Attorney John Cassinat represents the plaintiff. The defendant moved to strike several claims in the lawsuit as improper SLAPP claims.

The judge agreed with defendant and said defendant could file a motion to recover their legal fees.



From the Judge and Court File:

Attorney John Cassinat filed a lawsuit based on protected free speech activity. This lawsuit centered around statements made to public officials during a subdivision permit process.

The judge said Cassinat "mispprehends" important caselaw.

John Cassinat is said, by the judge, to not have properly evaluated the law and to have filed an improper lawsuit.

The judge went further ... noting the attorney failed to provide evidence showing the lawsuit had a probability of prevailing.

The court ruled the lawsuit did not make proper allegations to support the claims being challenged. Repeatedly the judge says there is "no evidence" for various claims. We counted 7 times the judge said there was "no evidence".

The court also said, procedurally, Cassinat made an improper argument which needlessly increased the burden on the judge in evaluating the situation. "This is inappropriate and has made the Court's review of the instant motion unnecessarily burdensome."

The judge noted, for one of the claims, that John Cassinat's client was making a claim of slander based on a statement made to himself - based on the allegations Cassinat drafted in the complaint.

The end result was the court in the tentative granted defendants SLAPP motion to strike causes of action from the complaint.

Then the judge said the defendants can file a motion seeking recovery of their fees.

From the court file we believe Cassinat withdrew a request to argue the judge's ruling, which should have meant the tentative ruling became a final ruling. About 10 days later Cassinat dismissed the lawsuit, including claims not part of the SLAPP motion.



Lawzilla Commentary:

It one thing to lose a motion based on good faith argument. Here the judge repeatedly says there was "no evidence" to support claims, that the law was "misapprehended", and "inappropriate" actions before the court were taken.

We are concerned about these comments from the judge because they reflect on attorney competence.



Edward Freidberg vs. Christo Bardis

Summary: Attorney John Cassinat represents the plaintiff. The defendant moved the strike the lawsuit as an improper SLAPP complaint.

The judge agreed and awarded $18,475 in legal fees and costs against Cassinat's client.



From the Judge:

John Cassinat represented the plaintiff in this lawsuit. The defendant filed a motion to strike the complaint as an improper SLAPP action. The judge previously granted defendant's motion.

The winning defendant is then entitled to be reimbursed their reasonable legal fees and costs. Defendant requested $27,500. Cassinat argued only $6095 was reasonable.

The judge said that the defense attorney's request to be paid $600 an hour was excessive for the case as no complex or unique legal issues were involved. It was a straightforward application of the law to protected activity one cannot sue about. The judge reduced the hourly fee to $400.

Mr. Cassinat then argued the requested hours spent on the defense should be reduced. The judge reduced the total hours by about 5.3 hours.

The court also said the defendant was allowed to recover the hours spent arguing over attorney fees and hours spent.

The end result was $18,475 in fees and costs against Cassinat's client.

From the court file we believe the tentative ruling became the Sacramento court's final ruling.



Lawzilla Commentary:

When the judge reduced the defense attorney's billing rate by one-third because "no unique or complex questions of law were presented" and it was a "fairly straightforward" case, that necessarily leveled what what we see as a harsh critique on John Cassinat's legal abilities. In other words, this was not a novel, unique, or complex case where an attorney may have reasonably thought it was proper to bring the lawsuit.

Although Cassinat was successful in reducing the defense attorney's compensable time by 5.3 hours, at what cost? The judge refers to Cassinat making numerous arguments, including numerous attacks on billing entries involving one-tenth of an hour. The judge said Cassinat prepared charts dissecting the other attorney's time to find duplicative work. From the judge's comments we reasonably believe Cassinat spent many hours on the matter.

The judge then awarded defendant 7.7 hours for time spent arguing over the time.

The result we see is a potential net loss for Cassinat's client if the time was charged: The judge awarded more time spend arguing over legal fees than what Cassinat was able to eliminate, and then there is the question of what Cassinat charged his client, if anything, for this result.

As for the one-third reduction in the defense attorney's rate, an interesting part of this case is the defense attorney only charged his client $275 per hour. But he requested an enhancement up to $600 per hour. The judge awarding "only" $400 an hour is not exactly - in our opinion - a big win for Cassinat. It just does not seem to us to be a good result when the other attorney is charging their client $275 per hour, and Cassinat's client ends up paying the other attorney $400 per hour for "reimbursement".

We are not sure how this legally happens, but it seems to us the defense attorney charged $275 per hour and because Cassinat lost the SLAPP motion his client has to reimburse the defendant for legal fees at $400 per hour - and the judge tacked on additional fees for the time spent arguing these issues.

Would you hire John Cassinat to be your attorney?

It is one thing to lose a motion or a case. It is quite another to lose three for the same reason - the filing of improper SLAPP lawsuits.

In the first case we reviewed the tentative ruling for the motion to strike to see what happened. A plaintiff had a judgment against him and did not like an abstract of judgment which apparently clouded the title of a house to be sold.

The lawsuit filed by Cassinat apparently sought to remove the judgment - which we presume was a lien against the property.

Defendants claimed the lawsuit arose from their attempts to enforce the judgment, namely filing an abstract of judgment.

The judge said plaintiff had no contrary legal authority.

When reviewing the merits the court said "plaintiffs fail to proffer competent admissible evidence" to support their position.

The judge then repeatedly noted plaintiff had provided no evidence to support various claims.

The judge also said the lawsuit was barred by the litigation privilege which prevents lawsuits against someone trying to enforce a judgment.

Bottom line is attorney John Cassinat filed a lawsuit and then was unable to provide legal authority supporting the claims and was unable to provide evidence supporting the claims.

In the second case the judge referred to Cassinat "mispprehending" the law and making improper arguments with "no evidence".

In the third case the judge said the defense attorney needed to have is fees reduced because it was not a novel or unique case - that is - a case a reasonably competent attorney would not have filed.

In an interesting coincidence the same defense attorney was involved in both the Reynolds and Friedberg cases.

John Cassinat was admitted to the California Bar in 1987. Bar Number 131214.

4815 Laguna Park Drive #C
Elk Grove, California 95758

Law School: UC Davis