DA dismisses fraud case against Newport Beach attorney

The Orange County district attorney dismissed an indictment alleging a Newport Beach trial lawyer engaged in a "referral for compensation" scheme when he bought the rights to use the name of personal injury firm Jacoby & Meyers.

"These charges should have never been brought," said Marshall Camp of Hueston Hennigan LLP, which defended Steven Mehr. "Mr. Mehr has dedicated his life to representing individuals whose lives have been affected by serious injuries. We are enormously gratified by this result."

In November, Camp asked Superior Court Judge Kimberly Menninger to recuse Deputy District Attorney Noorul Hasan, the prosecutor assigned to the case, citing misconduct. On Dec. 2, the district attorney's office dismissed the indictment.

Hasan interviewed witnesses on multiple occasions without the knowledge or consent of their attorneys violating the California Rule of Professional Conduct prohibiting a lawyer from communicating with a party they know to be represented by counsel without the counsels consent, according to the motion.

Calls and email requests to the DA's office for comment went unanswered.

The 47-count indictment returned by a grand jury in April 2021 followed more than five years of investigation and pre-indictment litigation, according to Hueston Hennigan. The indictment alleged Mehr, a sole practitioner, bought usage rights to "Jacoby & Meyers" for his marketing firm, Web Shark 360, and struck a deal with at least six attorneys who agreed to pay him "a monthly fee for a predetermined number of client referrals, or a percentage of the attorneys' fees collected from the referred case."

Staff at Mehr's marketing firm would receive leads for cases in the form of telephone calls and online inquiries. Mehr allegedly directed his staff to convert those leads into clients for the attorneys who agreed to pay him the monthly rate for marketing services, according to the indictment.