KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (Legal Newsline) - A Tennessee federal judge won't change his ruling in a dispute between a personal injury law firm and a man it hired to drum up business because of a one-day delay in one of the firm's filings.
Judge Clifton Corker denied Erik Cooper's motion for reconsideration of a 2022 ruling in his lawsuit against Blum Collins, which hired Cooper to find California clients to sue over the 2018 Woolsey Fire. Corker had ruled Collins failed to show why he sued in Tennessee.
Blum filed a motion for reconsideration in December and said Blum Collins' opposition to it should be struck because of a one-day delay in postmarking it.
Corker found Feb. 10 Cooper had not produced any new evidence to support overturning the original ruling. Also, the opposition was filed electronically, so the delay in postmarking it was irrelevant, he said.
"...Plaintiff was required to show the parties contemplated a 'continuing relationship' implicating the state of Tennessee or its citizens," Corker said. "The record contained overwhelming evidence the consequences of the parties' agreement would be felt exclusively in California - not in Tennessee."
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.
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.
Cooper's motion for reconsideration said Corker had a fundamental misunderstanding of the evidence in the record. He said Corker 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," Cooper wrote.