Universal Semiconductor, Inc vs Tuoi Vo - According to the Santa Clara Superior Court's judge in the ruling for this matter, as well as the court's online records, the attorney for plaintiff is Peter Chernik.

From the tentative ruling this is what happened:

Attorney Peter Chernik represents the plaintiff in this case.

Defendant served discovery for Mr. Chernik's client to answer. This consisted of written questions to answer called interrogatories. There was also a request to produce documents.

The judge's order does not go into detail about what happened or why further discovey responses were needed.

However, what the judge did say is noteworthy.

The court did not just sanction Chernik's client for not responding to discovery.

The court also personally sanctioned attorney Peter Chernik.

A total of $2400 in sanctions.

This is a huge amount.

The amount must be paid within thirty days. If not, there could be more sanctions.

We reviewed the court's online case docket for the matter. It appears a month before Peter Chernik, Esq., filed his own discovery motion seeking sanctions. It was denied by the court.

It also appears that several months before that attorney Peter Chernik had filed another motion to compel discovery and seeking sanctions. Our read of the docket entries is that this motion was denied too.

Before that ... we found this case previously listed in Lawzilla where attorney Chernik was filing yet another motion to compel and seeking sanctions. You can probably guess the result - the judge denied the motion.

And before that yet another case reference on Lawzilla were Peter Chernik was requesting sanctions - which the court also denied.

Worse, the judge noted Chernik's argument was weak, made a request not complying with California law, failed to submit a declaration supporting what Chernik sought. Then the judge said Chernik's request cited the wrong law.

If you are keeping score, what we have is five motions and five motions that attorney Peter Chernik lost. Now a judge says the intent is to issue sanctions - a whopping $2400 per the last tentative ruling.

Would you hire Peter Chernik to be your attorney?

LOL

For starters, Mr. Chernik is likely at least 70 years old. Does wisdom come with age, or should someone retire?

From the review of court orders that have found their way into the website that attorney Chernik was involved with, he has lost every one.

Maybe he won all the motions that we did not happen to see. But even with a small sample size this is not good.

In our opinion worse than the recent sanctions are the judge's harsh comments for the one prior motion suggesting a lack of legal competence.

Attorney Peter Chernik has been disciplined twice by the California State Bar.

In one incident he was disciplined and suspended from practicing law. The details per a Supreme Court case were that Chernik was convicted of a conspiracy to defraud the United States. A sting operation found he was involved in a scheme where dates on documents were fabricated to create tax benefits. Peter Chernik was sentenced to over a year in prison.

In the second incident it appears was suspended for not paying his bar membership dues.

Peter Chernik was admitted to the California Bar in 1969. Bar Number 43965.

28 15th Ave
San Francisco, California 94118

Law School: Hastings College of the Law