Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Van Sickle v. Gilbert (Cal. Ct. App. - June 29, 2011)

How can an attorney get sued, repeatedly sanctioned, and then have his answer stricken as a terminating sanction and face a $2 million-plus default judgment?  Like this.

What Northern California attorney Gregory Gilbert does to get himself in this situation is truly impressive.  A string of incredibly bad decisions and incredibly bad lawyering.

He ultimately gets out of the default judgment on appeal because the plaintiff didn't request an actual dollar amount in the complaint.  But only for now.  The panel's not sympathetic (and rightly so), and he's still facing sanctions and RFAs deemed admitted etc.  So it's largely only a question of time.

Surprisingly, Gilbert's still an active member of the Bar notwithstanding everything I've read.  He's also apparently the CEO of several companies, including Diabetic Innovations.  Read his bio.  Which paints him, not at all surprisingly, in a much more favorable light than he comes off in the Court of Appeal.  (Though when you bother to mention in your handcrafted biography that you were previously in a law firm that had a partner who subsequently became a justice on the California Court of Appeal, well, that just comes off as lame)