Multimillionaire Sues DV Lawyers and Loses
Media Contact
Tia Katrina Taruc Canlas
Alipato Project
Cell: 510-393-2723
tia@alipatoproject.org
For Immediate Release
July 21, 2017 (Clyde Berg v. Alipato Project et. al., Oakland, CA) – Yesterday, an Alameda County Superior Court Judge dismissed a frivolous lawsuit brought by the law firm Crosby & Crosby PLC on behalf of Clyde James Berg, a multimillionaire real estate mogul.
After allegedly subjecting his former spouse to years of horrific psychological and physical abuse, Clyde Berg managed to escape criminal and civil liability using his privilege and the enormous network of wealth he amassed as a real estate developer. Since the conclusion of those matters, Clyde Berg has refused to abdicate control—as is true for many abusers—and recently brought a meritless malicious prosecution claim as retaliation against the advocates who refused to yield in their prior representation of his former spouse: the Alipato Project, Tia Katrina Taruc Canlas, Maier Shoch LLP, Eric Robert Maier, and Louis Elwood Shoch III.
The Alipato Project is a small Berkeley nonprofit, the first and only of its kind. Its mission is to obtain financial justice for resisters of domestic violence by suing their abusers in civil court. Taruc Canlas is the only attorney on staff. Attorneys Maier and Shoch volunteered as co-counsel in the case.
In his malicious prosecution suit, Clyde Berg insisted—without any actual evidence—that the defendants had put their client, his former spouse, on the witness stand while knowing that she was committing perjury. Taruc Canlas disputes that claim: “There’s no way for Clyde Berg to prove that I believed my client was lying,” said Taruc Canlas, “because I still believe her.”
Crosby & Crosby, nonetheless, persisted in their complaint. They pointed to a judge’s stray remark that Ms. Berg’s testimony was “unworthy of belief” during a prior preliminary hearing on Clyde Berg’s criminal charges. As Alipato Project and Maier Schoch LLP pointed out, that judge’s finding deserved no deference because the presentation of evidence at the hearing was so lacking: The District Attorney in that proceeding offered none of the ample evidence to corroborate Ellena’s claims. There were many photos showing a litany of bruises and detailing a long history of abuse, yet none of those photos—not even the ones taken by a third party neutral forensic nurse—were introduced at the preliminary hearing.
As is true with all resisters of rape and domestic violence, the deck was stacked against Ms. Berg, a multi-lingual, college-educated immigrant and professional dancer pursuing a master’s degree at Santa Clara University. All anyone saw was a woman married to an older richer man. Indeed, at the preliminary hearing on Clyde Berg’s criminal charges, the judge inexplicably noted,
“When [Ms. Berg] was asked what her wedding [date] was… her response was, ‘Some time in 2002,’—not quite the response I would expect from a woman telling us her wedding date.”
Defending against a full-blown malicious prosecution suit would have undoubtedly forced co-defendants Alipato Project and Taruc Canlas to consume their limited operational budget. However, the California legislature sought to prevent this exact result in enacting the California Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation Statute (commonly known as the “anti-SLAPP statute”), which provides for the immediate dismissal of any claim arising from any act of a defendant in furtherance of their right of petition or free speech. Here, Clyde Berg’s complaint had no purpose other than to punish Ms. Berg’s advocates for attempting to vindicate her rights and to silence any further action, as demonstrated by a series of emails sent by Clyde Berg taunting Ms. Berg’s attorneys.
As such, the trial court dismissed Clyde Berg’s suit, concluding “that Clyde has not shown a possibility of prevailing on his malicious prosecution action.” As the court noted, “attorneys should not be subject to malicious prosecution liability for presenting a client’s case to a jury if the client’s testimony, if believed, would support the elements of a cause of action, unless the attorney knows or believes that testimony to be false or perjured.” And that was simply not the case with respect to any of the advocates at Alipato Project or Maeir Schoch LLP.
Said Taruc Canlas, “Our nonprofit relies on a lot of volunteers. We’re thankful to Kimpo Ngoi who volunteered to help draft Alipato Project’s anti-SLAPP motion. Folks also helped us pay the $1,000+ court filing fee needed to file the moving papers. We had barely enough time to defend against this action, much less any money to spend settling this case with a multimillionaire. But now that this is finally over, we can focus on our goal to end domestic violence…one zip code at a time.”
To read the 5 page court order granting Alipato’s anti-SLAPP motion, click HERE. If this victory inspires you to stand with people affected by domestic violence, please consider supporting the Alipato Project and its mission below.
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