Court Says $50,000 Award Fits to a ‘T’

In a ruling likely to delight grammar teachers, a state appellate court has decided that winning a lawsuit doesn’t exempt an attorney from a higher duty: spelling properly.

The decision, handed down this week by the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana, upheld a ruling by a lower court that set the price of the letter t at $50,000.

In October, 1978, James Orr won a $50,000 judgment against William Elliott in a lawsuit over dissolution of their joint ownership of a Santa Ana bar.

But the legal papers prepared by Orr’s attorney and sent to the county recorder’s office to establish a lien against Elliott’s property left off the final “t” in the defendant’s name. Thus, when Elliott sold a parcel of property in 1979 under his correctly spelled name, the title company found no record of a lien.

The buyer, homonymously named Rick Byers, knew nothing of Elliott’s debt.

When Orr found out that buyer Byers had acquired the land formerly owned by Elliott (Elliot), he filed suit in Orange County Superior Court to attach the property.

Orr died before a final resolution was reached, and his widow sued the attorney who prepared the legal papers without the final “t.” That attorney settled the case against him out of court in an agreement that allowed him to pursue the lawsuit against Byers as his own, according to the appellate court ruling.

Eventually, Superior Court Judge James Cook ruled for Byers. Orr had had his chance at the property, and it had slipped away for good because of the misspelling. He was, in a word, misspell-bound--and so was his attorney.

In its ruling this week, the Court of Appeal agreed and said that “requiring a title searcher to comb the records for other spellings of the same name would place an undue burden on the transfer of property.”

Attorneys for the plaintiff in the lawsuit against Byers argued that even the telephone directory warns readers searching for an Elliott to “See Also Eliot-Elliot,” but the justices were unpersuaded.

Byers’ attorney, Alan A. Knox, said: “Everybody knew that it was necessary to spell names properly in the official records. Had the court held the other way, it would have sent shock waves to everybody and his brother.”

But the plaintiff’s attorneys disagreed. They said an appeal to the California Supreme Court is possible.

“The client we represented misspelled a name on a judgment roll, and as a result of that, the judgment debtor managed to squirrel away the only asset he had, rendering the judgment uncollectible,” attorney James R. Robie said.

Said another plaintiff’s attorney, Michael J. O’Neill: “Nine years of litigation over a missing ‘t’ ”