In less than two hours of deliberations, a Santa Monica jury on Tuesday awarded a local lawyer $146,000 for representing a Malibu property owner for six years.
Jurors agreed unanimously that Orlando Aliberti, 84, owes Richard Grimwade $146,284.94 for representing Aliberti in a drawn-out insurance dispute following the 1993 fires in Malibu.
“The documents spoke for themselves,” said juror John MacNeil, 68, a land surveyor in Topanga Canyon. MacNeil said Grimwade laid out a clear and concise case for why he was owed the money, and said Aliberti’s memory lapses worked against him.
“The only contention was (whether) to cut the fee down to a certain amount, but we had no expertise on how to do that and there was no evidence given us to reduce the fee,” he said of an effort by two jurors to fashion a compromise.
Paul Cohen, Aliberti’s new attorney, said he is will consider filing a motion for a new trial in the next 10 days. Grimwade did not return calls seeking comment.
Aliberti first hired Grimwade to represent him after the 1993 Malibu blaze scorched his home and a six-unit apartment building on Rambla Pacifica. Allstate Insurance Co. agreed to pay $2 million to rebuild Aliberti’s home, but, because he had a “limited liability” clause on the insurance covering the apartment building, the company only handed over $450,000 for the apartment building.
Unsatisfied, Aliberti sued Allstate. The case was first tossed out of court on the grounds that Aliberti waited too long to file it. Grimwade appealed that ruling and won, but when it finally went to court a jury ruled in favor of Allstate.
Aliberti wanted Grimwade to represent him in an appeal. But because he said he was still due $146,000 in fees, Grimwade refused and dropped the case. Grimwade said he was paid a total of about $9,000 for the work he did for Aliberti.
After dropping Aliberti as a client, Grimwade sued him.
At issue in the case was what fee agreement existed between the two. Though the last signed contract indicated Grimwade should be paid a $125 hourly rate plus 20 percent of any money recovered from the insurance company, Cohen argued the two later renegotiated that deal to a pure 40 percent contingency agreement.
Cohen also questioned the quality and quantity of work Grimwade did and accused him of duping an old man into a protracted legal battle, and giving him false hopes of winning big.
“The bottom line is, at the end of the day, he is limited to a ‘reasonable’ fee,” Cohen said after the ruling.
Grimwade said he worked 14 and 16 hours a day on the case and was facing a team of six lawyers working for Allstate. He said he negotiated a favorable $500,000 settlement from Allstate that he suggested Aliberti accept but that Aliberti pushed for the trial on principle and lost.
Also at issue in the case was the accuracy of Aliberti’s testimony. After slipping and hitting his head in February of 2000, Aliberti spent four weeks in a coma and another two weeks in the hospital. Since then, his memory has been clouded at times, lawyers said.
Aliberti, a white-haired veteran who fought under Lt. Jimmy Doolittle in the WWII Army Air Corps., sat in Santa Monica Superior Court Judge Valerie Baker’s courtroom as the verdict was delivered.
“He wants it to be over,” Cohen later said. “Basically it’s just disbelief. He’s surprised.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 29, 2003. Read the original PDF.