Recent Successes for Proudfoot & Quach LLP

The attorneys at Proudfoot & Quach LLP had a very successful year in 2008 and 2009. Here's a few of the cases we worked on in 2008 and 2009:

• We successfully settled a matter for a hotel client with respect to uninsured losses from a fire in a restaurant tenant’s premises. When we entered the case, it had been pending for 1 year, without our client’s knowledge, as a subrogation case originally brought by another tenant whose premises suffered damages caused by the firefighting efforts. Our client’s insurance company had also brought a claim against the restaurant owner to recover the amount it paid our client under the insurance policy. We immediately filed a complaint in intervention to seek uninsured losses against the restaurant tenant and various other parties. The mediation was continued to provide time for our client to conduct its investigation and we were able to establish that our client had sustained recoverable losses substantially greater than the client was initially aware of, particularly in the areas of business income loss and code upgrades. Within six months, the case settled at the continued mediation session with a high 6 figure amount paid to our client. Since the total amount of insurance coverage was less than the claims, our client’s recovery effectively came out of the amount that its insurer would have otherwise obtained in the subrogation action since the insured has the right to the first dollars (vis a vis it’s carrier) from the settlement funds.

• We successfully represented a client on an appeal from an adverse judgment in a case tried by different trial counsel. The dispute was a complicated one in which our client claimed it was owed money under a note it received many years before and that it was entitled to purchase time on a TV station at a favorable rate. One of the defendants had a cross complaint for fraud against our client. The trial judge granted a non suit against our client at the close of the case and then granted a non suit to our client on the cross complaint. The trial judge also entered an award of attorneys’ fees and costs against our client in excess of $2 million. Our client appealed and the defendant cross appealed. The Court of Appeal not only reversed the judgment in favor of the defendants on our client’s complaint [including the attorneys’ fees and costs award of in excess of $2 million], it also affirmed the non suit in our client’s favor on the cross complaint. A rehearing was denied as was a petition for review. The result is that our client now has an opportunity to recover on its complaint and to present evidence that it had been previously precluded from presenting on parol evidence grounds, without exposure to judgment on a cross-complaint.

• We were engaged by counsel for a company on a Thursday afternoon to review and conduct an analysis of a significant number of documents relating to financing which was about to be declared in default. We drafted a fraud complaint against the lender and employees of the lender by the end of Monday. The draft complaint was then used by the counsel to work out a favorable resolution of the alleged default for the client, thus permitting it to proceed with its project.