Odd turns of malpractice trial include lawyer reading British tabloid

LOS ANGELES -- Minutes before a malpractice trial recessed Friday, a defense attorney for Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP began reading to the jury excerpts of a newspaper article about crimes allegedly committed by the firm's former client, a disbarred British solicitor.

"The doors have been thrown wide open," to tell the jury what Britain's Daily Mail had written that got the plaintiff disbarred in his home country, Edwards Wildman's attorney John M. Moscarino of Valley Makoff LLP declared earlier in the day.

As Moscarino began reading, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Terry Green called a recess, and told the attorneys he would likely instruct the jury to take the contents of the Daily Mail articles with a grain of salt. He indicated his instruction would be, "You shouldn't assume the facts therein are true or false," adding that the limited purpose they served was that "because they were written, things happened."

The problem, as Green saw it, was that it was unfair to question the plaintiff on whether or not he was convicted of a felony as it related to the current case. On the other hand, the judge said he was "hard-pressed to clip the wings of the defense by saying they can't push back," considering the jury had already heard so much from the defense about the hardships of plaintiff Shahrockh Mireskandari.

Mireskandari has accused Edwards Wildman of malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty and breach of contract.

The plaintiff, represented by Kathleen Bliss of Kathleen Bliss Law and Becky S. James of James & Associates, sued Edwards Wildman on grounds the firm, and specifically attorney Dominique Shelton, overcharged him and misrepresented their expertise when they represented him in his invasion of privacy suit against the British tabloid.

Dominique Shelton of Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP

The trial, which began early last week, has been marked by the unusual circumstance of Bliss sitting in the witness stand and reading Shelton's deposition to the jury, although Shelton has been in the courtroom each day.

"How can she not testify when you have the ability to call her as a witness," Green asked, to which he received no response.

It was at the conclusion of Bliss' reading of the deposition that Moscarino said, "I don't think there's any doubt the doors have been thrown wide open on the [Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal] violation."

Also on Friday, with only attorneys in the courtroom, Bliss told the judge she saw one of the jurors tell a witness, the plaintiff's wife, that she was a good witness.

Frustrated, Green said, "We can not lose any more jurors," noting that the testimony and the trial itself had gone on too long already and if he had to declare a mistrial the case "will not be tried in my lifetime." Shahrokh Mireskandari v. Edwards Wildman Palmer et al. BC517799 (filed Aug 9, 2013, L.A. Sup. Ct.)

Green said he would likely either make the juror in question an alternate or dismiss them entirely. He noted that another juror was dismissed Friday morning to attend to a death in the family.

The plaintiff's wife, Saeedeh Mirshahi, herself a British solicitor, was questioned for much of the day Friday by Jaya C. Gupta of James & Associates about a series of meetings with her husband's then-attorney, Shelton.

Mirshahi said around the time of a March 2012 meeting, she received a budget approved by Shelton that suggested a price range of $338,250 to $601,170 that would cover the entire case.

A follow-up meeting in June 2012 yielded far different results. Mirshahi said her husband returned from a meeting with Shelton and showed her anti-SLAPP papers he hadn't signed, a revised budget and a negligence waiver which he also declined to sign.

Mirshahi said the anti-SLAPP motion constituted a major change in direction of both the breadth and cost of the case and came with a heftier invoice, of some $60,000 more, just to deal with defense of the Daily Mail's anti-SLAPP motion.

Mireskandari was disbarred in Britain after the Daily Mail published a series of 2008 stories alleging he had falsified legal qualifications and hid criminal convictions while representing celebrity clients.