Skip Miller

Los Angeles

Litigation

Skip Miller has been a litigator for half a century and he's never been busier -- crisscrossing the country with cases totaling billions.

Recently the firm more than doubled its office space and filled it with attorneys. Prospective clients have been calling from around the nation.

"We started this firm 17 years ago," Miller said. "So we're really setting the world on fire, quite frankly."

One of his biggest cases is known nationally as the Woodbridge Ponzi scheme, where investors were bilked out of $1.3 billion in phony real estate transactions out of California. While the U.S. Attorney's Office convicted the main players in 2021, Miller is suing law firms that helped the enterprise.

"There was no outside accountant. They didn't hire one ... but they used law firms," Miller said. "People really got hurt. You're talking about retirees, generally older people, many of them put their life savings on the line and it's gone."

Often Miller represents large entities, like the City of Inglewood in connection with bringing the Clippers and their new arena to the City or the Peninsula Hotel Beverly Hills suing the Waldorf-Astoria over acquiring trade secrets. But he also likes working with solo business owners.

For example, client Byron Allen, a black media mogul who owns dozens of TV stations and cable networks including the Weather Channel through his company Entertainment Studios. Allen is suing McDonald's in a civil rights action over the food company's refusal to advertise on his networks because he is black. Entertainment Studios Networks, Inc., et al. v. McDonald's Corporation, 21STCV18981 (L.A. Sup. Ct., filed May 20, 2021).

"We have testimony from McDonald's people that Byron's company was relegated to their black only advertising agency, black targeted advertising agency," Miller said. "But his programming is not black targeted. So the inference is, it's pretty obvious that he was sent to the black ad agency because he's black. You can't do that. You can't treat people differently on account of race."

Miller is also defending business executive Donald Friese, who is being sued for $240 million by the owners of a company he owned for decades. Friese sold a glass frame manufacturing business to Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope for $1.3 billion in 2015, with the agreement that he would stay on as CEO for five years and not compete elsewhere.

Three years in, Oldcastle fired Friese, who then waited two more years to start a similar manufacturing business. Oldcastle is claiming Friese breached his contract.

--Tori Richards