Lawsuits to Fit Any Occasion

Don’t mess with Robert W. Hirsh.

The 43-year-old lawyer sued the single mother he hired to stain the woodwork in his Hancock Park Tudor-style home, claiming she left some streaks on the wood.

He sued his stockbroker for not getting him into Microsoft stock.

After returning from a 1996 trip to Boston, Hirsh sued Pier 4 restaurateur Anthony Athanas, claiming the then-85-year-old man had assaulted him and his family after they complained about poor service.

Hirsh has also sued his own clients, including the one who claimed that Hirsh’s representation had cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hirsh demanded about $47,000 in fees, and when an arbitration panel ordered Hirsh to pay the client $25,000 instead, Hirsh filed a malpractice suit against his own lawyers who had represented him before the arbitration panel.

Hirsh even sued the synagogue where he was married, claiming that the religious elders had botched the catering of his wedding by, among other things, serving his guests cold vegetables and not giving his family all the leftovers.

“Either he has the worst luck in the world, or he likes to sue,” said Laurie Levenson, who teaches professional responsibility at Loyola University Law School.

“I’m not going to sit back and take a loss and do nothing,” said Hirsh, explaining his litigation philosophy. “I’m not going to be a patsy. I’m going to sue.”

And sue he has. According to court records, Hirsh has been a party in at least 82 cases since 1982, a staggering number, even in litigation-laden Los Angeles.

Hirsh’s adversaries say Hirsh uses his legal license as a cudgel. They call him the quintessential professional litigant, who files lawsuits and extracts settlement dollars from defendants ranging from mom-and-pop firms to multibillion-dollar corporations.

Some of these adversaries are now asking a judge to brand Hirsh a vexatious litigant, a label akin to a scarlet letter. If their wish is granted, Hirsh will join 434 other people barred by the Judicial Council of California from filing any more lawsuits without court approval or without posting bond. The council began compiling the list 10 years ago to blacklist the small number of people who waste taxpayers’ money by overburdening the court system with frivolous, duplicative and intentionally tormenting lawsuits.

Hirsh says all his lawsuits are meritorious. He points to favorable cash settlements reaped during the last two decades as evidence.

But Hirsh’s adversaries say his litigation record is an example of how someone can exploit the legal system to wear down opponents and have them pay settlements simply to make the lawsuits go away. Some of his adversaries say he has emptied bank accounts, ruined finances, and left a trail of people disillusioned with the judicial system.

Lawyers who have opposed Hirsh in court say he exploits a legal system in which compliant insurers and other defendants prefer to settle cases for less than the cost of litigation. People like Hirsh, they say, clog court calendars and contribute to the public outrage against lawyers and the judicial system.

Hirsh insists that the number of his cases merely shows that he utilizes the court system as it is intended.

The Judicial Council couldn’t say who holds the record as California’s most prolific filer of lawsuits, but that distinction probably goes to Liang-Houh Shieh, a Yale Law School graduate who filed dozens of lawsuits against hundreds of defendants, most of them former law partners or employers. Shieh, 52, was disbarred three years ago for waging what one judge called “a campaign of litigation terror.”

Hirsh’s critics say the Beverly Hills lawyer employs similar tactics.

Hirsh, according to the motion that seeks to declare him a vexatious litigant, has made a living suing “his clients, his brokers, the restaurants he frequents, the hotel he frequents, the airlines he flies, the many contractors who performed work on his home (including those whom he has not paid), the city of Los Angeles, his insurance companies, attorneys, his synagogue, wedding caterer and wedding hall, his former employers, his wife’s former employers, his mother-in-law’s neighbors, his wife’s valet parking attendant, his computer salesman, his car companies, the former owner of his home, his floor man, his marble layer and even attempted to sue the Rabbinical Council of California.”

Hirsh says his adversaries have misstated the number of lawsuits in which he has been a party. He acknowledges that he has been personally involved in “many” lawsuits but wouldn’t specify.

“Do I have a lot of lawsuits? Yes, I do,” Hirsh said. “I have nothing to be ashamed of. I’m proud to be educated enough to be able to use the legal system to prosecute my valuable legal rights.”

Hirsh’s education has come in handy, especially in dealing with the various contractors who worked to renovate his Hancock Park home.

Hirsh paid $950,000 in 1997 for the seven-bedroom, five-bath house and expected to pour in the same amount to repair it.

But the red-brick house has become a magnet for lawsuits. Citing a variety of claims ranging from fraud to breach of contract, Hirsh has filed separate suits against his landscaper, his wood stainer, his marble layer, the supplier of the wood floors, the home inspector and the former owner of the home. In addition, Hirsh is contesting a separate action by an electrician who placed a lien on the property, claiming he was not paid for work performed.

Was it simply a stroke of bad luck that many of the contractors Hirsh hired breached their contracts?

“I would say so,” Hirsh said. “I was just unlucky.”

The contractors and their attorneys don’t think so. They say that Hirsh’s suits against them are an effort on the lawyer’s part to avoid paying his bills.

Jeffrey Meltzer, who owns a local floor supplies business, says his suit against Hirsh is an example of how the lawyer uses the legal system to get his adversaries to capitulate.

Meltzer, whose Universal Hardwood supplied the oak flooring for Hirsh’s house, sued Hirsh in small claims court for a mere $150, claiming Hirsh wouldn’t pay his final bill.

Meltzer won the suit, but Hirsh got the judgment set aside when he filed his own suit, for $75,000, claiming that Meltzer had supplied substandard material. After several months of litigation, Meltzer’s insurance paid Hirsh $9,000 to settle the case.

Meltzer said he vigorously fought the settlement, but caved in when his insurer told him that he would be on the hook for any damage judgment if the case went to trial.

“I couldn’t understand how I was the victim in this case and he walked away with the money,” Meltzer said. “The whole thing is still nerve-racking.”

Like Meltzer, other people who have filed lawsuits against Hirsh have found themselves staring down the barrel of a Hirsh countersuit.

And Hirsh usually wins, he says.

Hirsh said he received a cash settlement in his countersuit against Melissa Murphy, the wood stainer, and many others.

The motion seeking to declare Hirsh a vexatious litigant has placed the spotlight on a man who describes himself as a “self-made success.”

Hirsh, who grew up in Queens, N.Y., graduated magna cum laude from State University of New York at Albany and went on to study law at Boston University.

A former professor described Hirsh as a “nice person who seemed sincere.” Several former classmates, who requested anonymity, fearing that they might be sued, remembered Hirsh as a class pariah who reveled in being a contrarian.

“He was feisty and always ready to challenge the professors,” said one New York attorney. “He was brazen . . . that his goal was to get a law degree to make money.”

“No one wanted to hang out with him,” said a female former classmate. “You felt badly about hating him so much.”

After law school, Hirsh moved to Southern California. His resume includes employment at major Los Angeles and New York law firms. His client list includes financial institutions, real estate developers and entertainment personalities, according to Hirsh, who also describes himself as an expert in real estate, bankruptcy and banking.

Hirsh’s aggressive tactics have caused his own run-ins with the law. In August 1998, a Los Angeles judge removed Hirsh from representing a defendant in a construction-related lawsuit, ruling that he had improperly contacted an opposing expert consultant without the approval of the other parties’ lawyers.

“You are not a very credible person,” said Judge Edward M. Ross.

A year earlier, a U.S. bankruptcy appellate panel upheld a bankruptcy’s judge’s finding that Hirsh had acted unprofessionally and hostile when he repeatedly instructed a client not to answer questions at a deposition.

The panel, which upheld $3,967.41 in sanctions against Hirsh, found that “Hirsh’s conduct fell far below the acceptable conduct for an officer of the court.”

Hirsh may profess to be an expert in banking, but he claims to know little about investing. And this lack of financial knowledge also has spawned lawsuits.

In August 1997, Hirsh sued Massachusetts Life Insurance Co., claiming that two years earlier the insurer’s agents had advised him to buy a life insurance policy, even though he wanted to purchase Microsoft stock.

That advice, Hirsh said in court papers, prevented him from taking advantage of the largest bull market in American stock history, during which Microsoft’s stock soared.

The lawsuit against Massachusetts Life was eventually settled. Hirsh wouldn’t say how much money he received, but one source said the insurer forked over about $100,000.

In 1999, Hirsh filed a similar suit against Merrill Lynch. Hirsh said he had contacted a Merrill Lynch broker--three months after suing Massachusetts Life--to invest $68,000 in Microsoft stock. Instead, the broker advised Hirsh to invest the same money in a bond fund.

On July 19, 1999, the bond fund was worth $67,400. If Hirsh had bought Microsoft stock, his investment would have been worth approximately $204,000, he said.

If Hirsh knew back in 1997 that Microsoft was a lucrative investment, why didn’t he simply buy Microsoft stock?

Hirsh says he was simply following expert advice. “I’m not a sophisticated investor,” he said.

Merrill Lynch describes Hirsh’s lawsuit as frivolous. “This is a lawsuit that should never have been brought,” said Bill Halldin, a spokesman for the brokerage. “It’s completely without merit. He was fully aware of the nature of the investment.”

The suit against Merrill Lynch is pending.

Several of Hirsh’s clients who have been sued by him say in court records and in complaints to the State Bar of California that the lawyer overbilled them. When they took him to court, or vice versa, Hirsh repeatedly threatened to use the legal process to run them out of money, they said.

“We are ruined,” said Tiberiu Petho, a former client who was sued by Hirsh, in a complaint to the state bar.

State bar investigators say the complaints against Hirsh do not warrant their attention.

Responding to one complaint, a senior state bar official wrote that the “state bar has had to set priorities with regard to the matters it will investigate and prosecute.”

Hirsh calls the complaints against him “gross character assassination.”

But Gregory Pyfrom, an attorney for one of the contractors seeking to declare Hirsh a vexatious litigant, says he simply wants to stop Hirsh from collecting “settlements by being a pain.”

To declare Hirsh a vexatious litigant, Pyfrom and his colleagues must show that Hirsh has lost at least five cases in which he represented himself during the last seven years. Pyfrom says he is confident he will prevail, listing at least 10 cases that went against Hirsh.

Hirsh denies losing 10 cases, says he always hires a lawyer to represent him, and says he will defeat the motion to declare him vexatious.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert L. Hess could decide Hirsh’s fate as early as Monday.

Meltzer, the wood supplier, says he is keeping his fingers crossed.

“I want someone to stop Hirsh,” Meltzer said, “because as long as he has a law license, he has teeth.”

*

Times researcher John Tyrrell provided research for this story.