Niall P. McCarthy

McCarthy represents senior citizens in a class action who allege their upscale retirement home, Vi at Palo Alto, illegally upstreamed $200 million in entrance fees to its parent company in Chicago, depriving them of a refund reserve fund McCarthy believes is legally mandated. His lead plaintiff is Nobel Prize in physics laureate Burton Richter, former director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Richter v. CC-Palo Alto Inc., 5:14-cv-00750 (N.D. Cal., filed Feb. 19, 2014). In March, U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila of San Jose dismissed the complaint, but McCarthy believes the judge left the door ajar for a plea to California's Department of Social Services.

"The case is highly novel because it is against a continuing care retirement community," McCarthy said. "It is a case of first impression. Judge Davila ruled that the facility was in fact required to keep a cash reserve, but that the state agency, not the judiciary, should enforce that requirement." So to keep his clients' claims alive, in April he wrote state regulators to ask for rulings requiring the retirement home to maintain a cash reserve. "The state is dragging its feet," he said. "This one will go on for a while."

McCarthy's win for the family of a deceased senior citizen, Rudolph Cook, in a difficult financial elder abuse jury trial was affirmed 3-0 on appeal in December. Jurors awarded Cook's heirs $1.9 million on claims that a neighbor, defendant Cyrus LaFarre, duped Cook into giving him his money and estate. McCarthy said the claims were hard to demonstrate because after Cook's death many of his financial records and other documents had been destroyed and Cook's family lived in another state.

"Then we got the key defense witness, a health care worker, to change his story on the witness stand," McCarthy said. "The worker had been claiming that Cook intensely disliked his family and wanted the neighbor to have his money, wasn't going to leave them a dime, they were liars and cheats." McCarthy said he asked the witness where he was when this conversation took place. "He said he was in the kitchen, completely forgetting Mr. Cook was bedridden way down the hall at the time. I said, 'You had this conversation through three walls of the house?' He started visibly sweating and shaking. It was hysterical. I wish I had it on tape. The jury went our way and the Court of Appeal agreed." Shook v. LaFarre, A142993 (Cal. App. 1st Dist. Dec. 16, 2015).

McCarthy has a full roster of whistleblower cases ongoing as well. "Frauds against the government is a growth industry," he said. "Those cases pay the bills; the elder abuse cases are a passion of mine. They're the reason why you get up in the morning."

— John Roemer