A judge ruled today the law firm that represented an actress when she won $17.3 million from Donald Sterling after a fire in her apartment in a building he owned can pursue a lawsuit against her for $760,000 in allegedly unpaid legal services.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Richard Fruin said he disagreed with arguments by attorneys for Robyn Cohen that the firm of Katz & Yoon did not provide enough details in its lawsuit for the case to move forward.
However, Fruin took under submission a separate dismissal motion by attorneys for the actress. It asks that the lawsuit be tossed and that the firm be fined nearly $12,000 for allegedly bringing a frivolous lawsuit to harass Cohen.
Fruin said that if he denies the second dismissal motion, he may stay the case pending the outcome of Cohen’s appeal of another judge’s decision to order a retrial of Cohen’s case against Sterling.
Katz & Yoon represented Cohen from June 2012 until January 2013, the firm’s lawsuit states. Attorney Brian Henri, who is defending Cohen, is a former member of the firm who along with lawyer Melissa Yoon represented the actress during the Sterling trial.
In yet another motion before Fruin on which he has not yet ruled, Katz & Yoon is asking that Henri be disqualified from representing Cohen. The firm’s lawyers argue in their court papers that Henri could use confidential firm information against his former employer to defend Cohen and that he could be an important witness in the lawsuit.
According to Katz & Yoon, Henri was obligated to obtain Cohen’s signature on a contingency fee agreement with the firm. However, Henri said after the December 2012 verdict was reached against Sterling that Henri had not obtained Cohen’s signature on the agreement after all, the suit states.
A month later, Henri “disavowed any contingency fee arrangement with the firm and denied that Cohen had any obligation to pay a contingent or any other fee to the firm,” the suit states.
“Cohen then went silent, refusing to reply to any inquiries from the firm’s other partners as to the status of her written fee agreement,” the suit states.
The firm’s lawyers spent more than 1,600 hours working on the actress’ case, the suit states.
Henri now has his own firm, Henri Law Group, located in Sunnyvale. He said Katz & Yoon is currently representing Sterling in an unrelated civil suit in federal court.
In Cohen’s case against Sterling, a jury found the billionaire real estate mogul liable to her for breach of contract, breach of the warranty of habitability and intentional infliction of emotional distress and awarded her $2.3 million in compensatory damages. The panel also found that Sterling and his employees at the West Hollywood property acted with malice toward Cohen,triggering a punitive damages phase of the trial in which she was awarded an additional $15 million.
Cohen said she lost most of her personal property in the Sept. 28, 2009, fire and maintained that the building had an inadequate fire detection system. She is appealing a February 2013 post-trial ruling by Judge William MacLaughlin. He ordered a retrial on all issues, stating in a 19-page decision that there was insufficient evidence to show that Sterling deliberately caused emotional distress to Cohen before or after the fire.
MacLaughlin also said there was no evidence that Sterling meant to cause Cohen or any other tenant emotional distress by failing to maintain the fire system before the blaze.
Cohen is perhaps best known for her topless role in Wes Anderson’s comedy-drama “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” which starred Bill Murray, Owen Wilson and Anjelica Huston.
She lived for 10 years in the 54-unit Sterling-owned building at 888 W. Knoll Drive and told jurors she stayed so long in part because it was under the city’s rent control ordinance.
Cohen maintained that her unit was among 52 units in which warning horns connected to the main alarm were not working the day of the fire. She also alleged that none of the dozen smoke detectors throughout the building were functioning.
Kim Webster, a former cast member on “The West Wing,” and several other tenants also sued Sterling in January 2010, but settled with him before trial.
