KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (Legal Newsline) - A federal judge has ruled for a personal injury law firm in a dispute with a man it hired to drum up business.
Plaintiff Erik Cooper, however, on Dec. 15 asked Tennessee federal judge Clifton Corker to reconsider his opinion issued a month earlier in favor of the firm Blum Collins, which hired Cooper to find California clients to sue over the 2018 Woolsey Fire.
Cooper failed to show why he sued in Tennessee and had his complaint dismissed without prejudice.
"There is no evidence in the record of any Tennessee contacts of Defendants other than those related to the present dispute," Corker wrote. "Defendants were complete strangers to Tennessee until January 2019 when they hired Cooper, and any connection with this state ceased at the end of Cooper's engagement."
The firm hired Cooper to conduct public information seminars in Los Angeles County after the Woolsey Fire killed three people and destroyed more than 1,000 homes in the Malibu area. It needed quick action to inform potential clients of their potential claims because of a short statute of limitations to sue Southern California Edison.
The firm said Cooper did little or no work and instead tried to extract more than $700,000 in exchange for not spreading false and defamatory statements.
Blum Collins’ May 23 motion to dismiss says Cooper has already tried take on the firm in California state court, where a judge granted the firm’s request to send the dispute to arbitration because of a clause in the contract.
Cooper sued on April 26, 2021, in California, but the matter was again ordered to arbitration.
“The arbitrator ruled that Defendants owe (Cooper) nothing, but (Cooper) owes Defendants about $33,000,” the motion says.
“Cooper sues again in this court asserting claims now barred by res judicata and claim preclusion,” the motion adds. “He does so against Defendants over whom this court lacks personal jurisdiction.”
Cooper filed multiple declarations in the California case that he is a resident of that state, as have the defendants, they say, leaving no diversity jurisdiction that would warrant filing a case in Tennessee federal court.
Plus, the $75,000 threshold of damages is not an issue because the arbitrator’s decision did not reach it, they say.
“(A)ll the evidence and witnesses in this proceeding are in Los Angeles County, California – including Plaintiff Cooper, who resides there,” the motion says. “The parties agreed when they signed an agreement in California that California law would govern their dispute.”
Cooper's motion for reconsideration says Corker has a fundamental misunderstanding of the evidence in the record. He says he made a prima facie showing that not all terms agreed to by the parties were subject to the California forum selection clause included in the written agreement.
"Plaintiffs' litigation consulting and claims consulting services were governed by the parties' verbal agreement only and were never reduced to writing," he wrote.