Man’s 100-Plus Lawsuits Get Attention

David Marc Greenstein sued UPS for ruining his rare Star Trek posters.

He sued Slim Fast for putting diet bars in packages he thought were misleadingly big. He sued a Van Nuys store he accused of saying they had a certain tile in stock when they didn’t. He sued a dog training service that he said failed to train his German shepherd and his poodle.

He sued his ex-wife. He got his current wife to sue her hairdresser for cutting her tresses too short before the wedding. He sued the wedding photographer--four times.

And when the businessmen he sued grumbled about him, he sued them again for slander.

Greenstein, 57, of Woodland Hills, has filed more than 100 lawsuits. It may be 200, he says, but in any case, so many lawsuits that he can’t remember just what his total is. He is becoming a sort of legend in the Los Angeles legal system and to his opponents a prime example of the need for a law to restrain what are called “vexatious litigators.”

A disbarred attorney, Greenstein said in an interview that he sues out of a passion for justice rather than wealth, making about $1 an hour on his low-sum lawsuits. He expects to be viewed, he said, as “a cross between Don Quixote, Ralph Nader and Charles Keating.”

Many he has sued have harsher assessments. In countersuits, at least six San Fernando Valley businesses accuse Greenstein of taking their merchandise or services and refusing to pay them.

Some legal experts say Greenstein--whose license to practice law was revoked after he pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit grand theft auto--shows the damage a skilled litigator can inflict if he carefully chooses his targets.

“A little bit of knowledge can be very dangerous,” said Chris Cameron, a professor at Southwestern School of Law. “If it’s an attorney, it just takes it up a notch because they know even more levers to pull.”

“For him to file costs $40, $50. For me to defend myself will cost thousands,” said Art Davis, a businessman enmeshed in a three-year legal battle with Greenstein. “We have no protection against people like this.”

There is, however, a little-known state law restraining chronic filers of frivolous lawsuits if they qualify under the statute for classification as vexatious litigators.

Greenstein has filed more lawsuits than most of the 79 people classed by Los Angeles County courts as vexatious litigators, most of whose lawsuits are numbered by the dozen.

To be classed vexatious, litigators must lose five cases in seven years, and a judge must rule that their cases are frivolous, barring them from filing any more without court permission.

Greenstein does not fall under the statute because he wins most of his cases, often settling before trial. Four cases have gone against him, but he disputes that they would all be considered “losses” under the statute.

“People look and say 200 cases, it’s gotta be a scam,” Greenstein said. “But if you go and look at each case, if you look at the outcome,” they are all merited.

Some who have settled with Greenstein say they felt bullied into it. “When you’re looking at your children and your house and everything you own, and somebody is saying, ‘I’m going to take this away from you unless you do exactly what I say,’ you get scared,” said one 37-year-old mother of four who settled one of Greenstein’s suits.

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Greenstein has a lighter side--he is a passionate “Star Trek” fan who once showed up for a conference at a rival attorney’s office in full Star Fleet officer costume.

He built and is now managing director of the Enterprise Bed and Breakfast, an inn in the Cayman Islands with a “Star Trek” theme, adorned with flags of allied planets.

He says he was expelled from Van Nuys High School because he made too many speeches in the courtyard, and he had an early encounter with the law when, at 18, he shot his father to death to protect his mother.

Greenstein says he was wounded during the encounter with his estranged father, a trucker who arrived at his mother’s home in a rage and threatened to kill them. Instead, the elder man was killed as he and Greenstein struggled over a pistol, a death ruled a justifiable homicide.

Even before his first brush with the criminal justice system, Greenstein had been fascinated with the law. After the shooting, he spent his spare time sitting in Valley courtrooms. After several years of working odd jobs, he enrolled in night school at the University of San Fernando College of Law, earning his law degree in 1968 and opening an office in Encino in 1969.

A year later, the law practice landed him in jail. According to a report from the State Bar of California on his disbarment, Greenstein backdated records to aid a client who was arrested while dismantling Greenstein’s own Porsche. Both men were charged with conspiracy to commit grand theft auto, for purposes of insurance fraud, and two counts of grand theft. Greenstein was initially released on bail, but was sent back to jail after he was charged with soliciting one client to kill another.

Greenstein pleaded guilty to the conspiracy to commit grand theft auto, and was released on bail after the other charges were dropped.

Weeks later, he tried to withdraw his plea, saying he made it only to escape County Jail.

Although he said he was willing to go to trial on the far more severe charge of solicitation to commit murder if his plea to the conspiracy charge was withdrawn, a Superior Court judge denied his request.

He served four more months in jail and was disbarred in 1974. At his request, the conviction was stricken from his record in 1976.

Greenstein now says he was guilty only of doing what an attorney is supposed to do--protect his client’s rights--and his actions were ethical under the principle of attorney-client confidentiality. The charges against him, he contends, were manufactured by vengeful authorities eager to topple a newly minted attorney.

A psychiatrist who examined Greenstein in jail concluded that his “identity and ego were completely involved in his legal career,” the State Bar report said.

Even after he was disbarred, Greenstein continued to work in the law, doing freelance paralegal work and writing his self-published book, “Sue and Grow Rich: How to Handle Your Own Personal Injury Claim Without an Attorney.”

Greenstein calls the title “gimmicky,” and says that the book does not advocate fraud. In it, he advises against exaggerating injuries, while instructing readers how to find “hidden defendants” and trick attorneys into giving free legal advice. By the time he wrote his book--dedicated to, among others, the Greek philosopher Diogenes, who searched in vain for an honest man--Greenstein says he was disgusted with the legal profession. He declined to apply for readmission to the bar and flaunted his status. He drove a car with a “DISBARD” vanity plate and wore a small red “D” patch, which he pointed to as his “scarlet letter” if his disbarment was brought up by opponents in court proceedings.

But he remained a regular in the courts, filing so many lawsuits that some court officials recognize his name with a scowl.

“If something is wrong, I have the ability . . . to do something about it,” Greenstein said. He later added: “If somebody gives me what I’ve paid for, I pay it, it’s not a problem. It’s when somebody figures they can beat me, or beat the system, or [think that] I don’t know what I’m doing, that there’s trouble.”

His adversaries have ranged from the couple he sued for backing out of an agreement to buy a piano from him, to big corporations like American Express. Slim Fast shrunk the size of its diet bar packaging after Greenstein’s suit--which he described as one of his favorites--and wrote a $1,000 check to the American Red Cross as part of a settlement.

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Others leave a bitter taste in his mouth, like his wife’s $250,000 suit, which alleged that a hairdresser lopped off two feet of her calf-length hair weeks before their marriage--charges denied by the salon. The couple dropped the case during a bitter trial.

Greenstein wrote angry letters to the opposing attorney and judge, which led to them securing two restraining orders against him.

Greenstein says many of his claims begin in incidents similar to the one that set off his suit against the Mintz Concrete Co. Greenstein says that Mintz was hired to dig footings for cement work at his Woodland Hills home, but that when he complained that the job was not done correctly, owner Barry Mintz fired back the classic retort: “Pay me or sue me.”

“Wrong one to say it to,” Greenstein said with a smile, although Mintz says he never made such a challenge.

Greenstein slapped the company with a $3,500 breach of contract suit, and, as he remembers it, settled a year later for $500 after the company admitted not digging the footing. But Mintz tells a different story, saying Greenstein refused to pay for $2,400 worth of work and that he settled only because his insurance company said the case was too costly to fight.

Many of those who have settled or consider settling with Greenstein say it is an economic decision.

“It’s just cost prohibitive for a small business to fight these cases,” said Robert A. Schwartz, an attorney for Keyboard Galleria in Woodland Hills, which settled one of Greenstein’s suits. “Whether he’s right or wrong, you just can’t fight a $10,000 suit over a $300 piano.”

“It can really take a toll on a person’s health,” said Greg Stone, who is defending a Woodland Hills computer company against Greenstein. Greenstein dismisses this as excuses made by people who have done wrong. He says that since he has not been declared a vexatious litigator, he has a right to sue when injured.

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Some merchants report positive dealings with Greenstein. “He’s been very, very good,” said LuAnn Parks of Warehouse Discount in Agoura Hills, where Greenstein bought an $800 faucet, only to find it was defective when he picked it up. The faucet is being reordered from Germany, and Greenstein said no lawsuit is in the works.

But there are others such as Mastercraft Door and Window Center in Canoga Park, which has swapped lawsuits with Greenstein. He alleges that much of the $10,000 worth of equipment he bought from Mastercraft was defective, and Mastercraft claims Greenstein owes the company money.

As he has done in other disputes, Greenstein picketed Mastercraft offices and their booths at home shows, distributing leaflets accusing Mastercraft of fraud. Greenstein said he sent a friend (whom he had once sued in small claims court) to solicit employees’ comments about him.

The alleged replies, captured on tape, were cited in a $25,000 defamation suit against employee Mike Davis. His mother, Cecelia Davis, owner of Mastercraft, says she is not about to back down in court. “I want this guy out of business,” she said in an interview. “This is going to be my good deed for Los Angeles.”

Greenstein, meanwhile, says he doesn’t plan to retreat from his principles anytime soon.

“I can’t live with someone screwing me over,” he said. “It’s cost me in my life and it will cost me again.”

Times researcher Rebecca Andrade contributed to this story.