Actor Nicolas Cage Ordered to Pay Attorney’s Fees in Real Estate Lawsuit After Losing Attempt to Compel Arbitration
On March 20, 2012, we posted about Lindemann v. Hume, et al., Case Nos. Nos. B226106, B233273 (2nd Dist. Div. 7 filed February 21, 2012) (Perluss, P.J.), a case in which the Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s order denying a motion to compel arbitration. This was a real estate sale/water intrusion/nondisclosure case. A motion to compel the Buyer to arbitrate raised “a possibility of conflicting rulings on common issues of law and fact if the nondisclosure causes of action against [the Seller] were ordered to arbitration and the litigation against [the Developer] proceeded in superior court” – the basis for denying the motion to compel arbitration. Actor Nicolas Cage is the beneficiary of the trust acting for the Seller, so we placed the case in our ‘celebrities” sidebar category.
The City News Service reported on August 17, 2012, that Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu found in favor of the trust set up for the Buyer, and awarded $165,510 in attorney’s fees – a loss for the Oscar winner.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich Writes of His Accomplishment in Getting Banks to Abandon Mandatory Arbitration of Credit Card Disputes
On August 17, 2012, Rep. Dennis Kucinich authored a short article in the Huffington Post, entitled “Consumers fight Big Banks for a Day in Court.” He objects to banks’ imposition of mandatory arbitration upon consumers. Rep. Kucinich bemoans that banks “erect massive structures of red tape that most American families don’t have the timore or money to fight.”
“My staff followed up with all the major banks,” writes Kucinich, “and, over the course of several months, nine of those banks abandoned the practice of using arbitration to collect their credit card debts.”
Rep. Kucinich’s comments do not mention CompuCredit Corp. v. Greenwood (2011), the recent U.S. Supreme Court case holding consumers who sign credit card agreements with arbitration clauses are bound to arbitrate. Consumer advocates have criticized the case.
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