REPRESENTATIVE CASES

Between 1999-2003, individuals in England, the United States, the Bahamas, and the Caiman Islands conspired together to engage in a vast and complex securities fraud and criminal racketeering scheme in which they lured investors under the auspice that their funds would be deposited with various United States and international banks for leveraged margin trading of U.S. Treasury Bonds utilizing various offshore investment vehicles.

In reality, it was a Ponzi scheme by which they bilked at least 1,000 investors of over $56,000,000.00, laundering these investment monies through complex layers of offshore shell corporations and bank accounts for defendants’ own use and gain to purchase private islands, rare art and jewels, NASCAR race cars,  and lavish homes, including the Redstone Castle.

When a group of investors became suspicious, they hired us to investigate the case. We filed suit under the civil remedy provisions of the Colorado Blue Sky Act and Organized Crime Control Act.  Soon after, the FBI, the SEC, and the IRS became involved, ultimately leading to Colorado’s largest-ever fraud recovery case and a 330 year sentencing of its ringleader, the second longest white collar conviction in United States history.

The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino empire was a closely held family company with all stock owned by its founder, Peter Morton, and his wife, Tarlton.  After their divorce, Tarlton as the minority shareholder sold her interests in the Hard Rock to her former husband based on a stock appraisal he provided; he concealed the fact that he was in negotiations for the sale of the Hard Rock for a sum far in excess of the valuation report he provided her.  Mere weeks after acquiring her stock at a distressed value, he announced that he had reached a final agreement to sell the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino to the Morgans Hotel Group, Inc. of New York, for $770,000,000.00.  Based on the actual sales price of the Casino, the valuation of Tarlton’s stock was nearly 2,400% higher than what had been represented and paid.  When Tarlton realized she had been duped, she hired us to file suit in Los Angeles to recover the difference.

In 2010, Google launched a new social networking site known as Google Buzz which it sought to position as a Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. In order to compete with these well established social networking media, Google implemented a proprietary algorithm designed to automatically create pre-determined networks of people with whom users communicate. It did this by scanning user emails and chat groups, automatically adding user contacts as “followers” with all private information about the user’s communications with those contacts publicly available to anyone who visited a Gmail account holder’s profile. Google’s software would also comb affiliate sites owned by Google, such as Picassa and Youtube, automatically importing private photographs and videos into a user’s profile where they were then publicly shared and automatically distributed. The result was a pre-made social network forced upon users of Gmail without notice or consent.

Several attorneys hired our firm to file a federal class action against Google in the Northern District of California for violations of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2511 et seq. We were appointed as Class Counsel and squared off against one of the largest companies, and largest law firms, in the United States. We won, Google capitulated, and ultimately agreed to pay over $10,000,000.00 in restitution and penalties.

In 2011, litigation erupted between our client, the developer of an exclusive gated residential community and golf club, and a wealthy group of club members and homeowners.  Our client had amassed evidence that the group had engaged in a coordinated campaign to position themselves to acquire the Cordillera Club at a substantially reduced market value by financially squeezing out the current owner.   In furtherance of this scheme, evidence demonstrated that the group had engaged in a strategic and systematic use of coercive pressures and other generally oppressive conduct and tactics designed to induce Club Members to stop paying dues, stop patronizing Club Facilities, and stop honoring their membership contracts with the Cordillera Club.  By organizing and inciting a group boycott of the Cordillera Club, they sought to dilute the fair market value of the Cordillera Club so as to acquire it on the cheap, exposing our client to over $96,500,000.00 in damages.

The membership group then initiated a separate class action seeking to recover from our Client over $110,000,000.00 in deposits paid by the nearly 800 Club Members, alleging that the Owner’s failure to keep all golf courses and facilities open triggered their right under the Membership Documents to rescind and accelerate the refund of their deposits.

The Owner hired us to handle both cases.  After significant litigation spanning multiple state courts, federal courts and bankruptcy court, we succeeded in discharging all liability for the Membership deposits and obtained a multi-million settlement for our client that left our client with ownership and firmly in control over the Club and its assets.

In 2009, the Related Companies, one of the world’s largest privately held corporations, began developing a new five star Viceroy Hotel in the resort town of Snowmass Village.   The project was to consist of five phases and multiple towers including 152 condominiumized suites which were to be sold for upwards of $4.5 million for a 1/8 fractional share.  Related marketed and sold the suites to wealthy buyers pre-construction, and then utilized the purchase deposits to partially fund construction costs.  Unfortunately, they misrepresented the true size of the units they were selling, over-stating the size of every unit by a substantial amount.  When the 64 pre-construction Buyers learned that every suite as built was actually smaller than advertised, they demanded their money back.  And they hired us to get it.

 Working together with several law firms representing all 64 Buyers, we filed suit under the Interstate Land Sales Full Disclosure Act ("ILSA"), a federal law designed to protect certain Buyers of real estate.  The court agreed with us that the Viceroy engaged in Fraud and entered summary judgment against the Viceroy.  As a result, each of our clients was afforded a full refund of their purchase deposits, together with costs, interest, penalties, and legal fees.

Four Seasons.  Ritz Carlton.  Hilton.  Starwood.  Loews.  Marriot.  Mandarin.  Westin.  The Beverly Wilshire.   Since 1985, the biggest names in the hospitality industry have turned to McGuire Builders for hotel renovation projects on some of their finest resort properties.  It’s what McGuire does…it’s all they do.  For the last 18 years, the Los Angeles based builder has focused exclusively on high end 4 and 5 star hotel renovations, completing over 300 hotel renovations comprised of more than 30,000 guestroom renovations and several million square feet of public space renovations.

And when McGuire was sued by a national contractor for alleged design and delay damages arising from the $35,000,000.00 renovation of the St. Regis Hotel in Aspen, McGuire turned to the attorneys at Praxidice to defend them.

The parties engaged in extensive discovery involving dozens of depositions and over 340,000 pages of documents.  Despite the weight of the evidence that the cost over runs and delays were not attributable to McGuire Builders, the plaintiff continued to demand millions of dollars to compensate it for the damages the contractor had sustained.  McGuire refused to capitulate and placed its trust in us to present the case to an arbitrator.  After a two week arbitration in Denver, the plaintiff contractor was awarded less than six percent of the damages it sought from McGuire, resulting in a near total victory for our client.

Pooling or sharing of tips between restaurant employees is one of the most misunderstood and frequently ignored laws in the hospitality industry.  Restaurants commonly establish “tip pools” by which all servers combine their tips at the end of a shift and then divide them between all tipped employees who provided customer service during the shift.  Tipped employees include hosts, bartenders, bussers, wine stewards (sommeliers) and servers who perform various customer service functions during the shift.  Restaurants often will include chefs and other kitchen staff in the tip pool in recognition of the kitchen’s labor and quality of food which brings the customers to restaurant in the first instance.  But rightly or not, that is illegal.

The Fair Labor Standards Act prohibits the sharing of tips with employees who do not customarily and regularly receive tips as part of their normal job position.  Employees who are required to share their tips with non-eligible employees are able to assert Collective Actions in Federal Court on behalf of every employee to recover every dollar ever shared with non-eligible employees, as well as liquidated and punitive damages, legal fees and statutory interest.  The risks and the damages are often substantial.

Praxidice has represented clients on both sides of Federal FLSA Collective Actions.  We have successfully represented wait staff at a restaurant chain who were illegally required by company policy to share their tips with the ownership group.  We have also successfully defended a Collective Action filed against a nationally renowned French bistro in which the wait staff had established their own voluntary “beer fund” for the kitchen staff.

In 1998, Tulasi Wilkinson entered an option contract to sell several valuable mining claims on Smuggler Mountain overlooking the City of Aspen to a Texas-based developer.  The Buyer failed to exercise the option within the option period and the contract automatically expired.  So Tulasi entered a new contract with another party.  When the first Buyer realized their oversight, the filed suit to compel specific performance.

Tulasi hired us to defend her.

In the middle of cross examination of the Buyer at trial, we succeeded in eliciting the previously undisclosed admission that ​the Buyer was a convicted felon who, at the time he claimed to have exercised the option, had in fact been serving time in a federal penitentiary after his conviction for orchestrating the largest individual bankruptcy fraud in US history.  With the Buyer's credibility destroyed, we obtained a complete defense verdict which successfully withstood challenge on appeal.  Tulasi was then able to re-sell the property to a third party for a substantial profit.