Plaintiff Professor's Losing Libel Lawsuit May Lead to His Former Lawyers Foreclosing on His Home

(Part of the fees also stemmed from defending against Ohio State's investigating his alleged research misconduct.)

Judge Jeffrey M. Brown's opinion in James E. Arnold & Associates, LPA v. Croce (Ohio Ct. Com. Pl. Franklin County, July 12), notes that the professor had given his then-lawyers a promissory note, secured by the house. Retraction Watch reports:

A law firm that holds a mortgage on the house of Carlo Croce, a cancer researcher at The Ohio State University, may foreclose on the property, a judge has ruled.

Croce hired James E. Arnold and Associates to represent him in a libel case against the New York Times and a defamation case against David Sanders, a professor of biological sciences at Purdue University who became something of a public nemesis for the Ohio scientist after pointing out problems in Croce's published work. Croce also needed representation for Ohio State's research misconduct investigation, and a suit attempting to stop the university from removing him as chair of the department of cancer biology and genetics.

Croce lost each case. Ohio State's investigation found problems with how he managed his lab that did not amount to research misconduct.

Arnold and Associates was the second firm Croce hired, after his original lawyers at Kegler Brown Hill & Ritter dropped his cases and sued him because he wasn't paying his bills. Last December, a judge ordered Croce to pay Kegler Brown nearly $1.1 million. To enforce the judgment, Ohio State has been garnishing his wages, and Kegler Brown has filed a motion for the court to allow Sotheby's to handle the sale of pieces from Croce's collection of Renaissance artwork, which the county sheriff seized….

See also this 2021 post on the Sixth Circuit opinion rejecting Croce's libel claim. Thanks to the Media Law Resource Center (MLRC) MediaLawDaily for the pointer.

Comments

[NvEric]

This highlights reliance on, and over use of, Law to solve problems better served by education in moral behavior AND ending the notion of economic rewards as the sole measure of worth.

The details of most all cases are trivial to the reason for having government in the first place - something no one alive has ever acceded to - and without such granting of our sovereign powers to form government, from time to time, government operates without consent, such as today when it is clearly not acting for us.

[Ridgeway]

FRAUD!

[Dr. Ed 2]

What is the benefit of legal rights when it is financially impossible to enjoy them? This, more than the Trump lynching, is why I think we are inexorably heading to a second shooting civil war.

[Sarcastr0]

FDR agreed. A more robust safety net so folks can spend what they earn on other than mere subsistence sounds great!

[mse326]

1. Don't file suits you can't win
2. Don't hire high paid lawyers if you can't afford it

[Doug Heffernan]

That's quite a lot of legal fees for which the plaintiff client didn't prevail.

If these lawyers are worth millions in fees for this one plaintiff client, are these lawyers negligent at all if they fail to determine their chance of success and advise their client that he'd likely be wasting a lot of money on legal fees by going ahead? Or, alternatively, refusing to take the case because the chance of success is so poor?

Maybe these lawyers are obligated to take the millions in fees for this lost cause because that's what the client wants, even if it goes against these lawyers best judgment. Cha-ching. I guess at least these lawyers won the foreclosure action.

[CJColucci]

The lawyers didn't take the case on contingency. They seem to have insisted on being paid their usual rates. That, in itself, is an indication that they didn't think much of the case. I suspect, but do not know, that there was a candid conversation on whether they would take the case on contingency or would, instead, require payment of their usual rates, and why. If the client wanted to go ahead anyway and bear the risk of loss, the lawyers had no obligation to turn down a payday, short of the case being utterly unsupportable.

[David Nieporent]

He didn't pay his first lawyers, and yet the second lawyers agreed to take him on as a client, on a lousy case, because he gave them a lien on his house. I'm… not sure I'd have been willing to do that if I were them.

But I am sure that this client has very very poor judgment.

[Life of Brian]

The lawyers didn’t take the case on contingency. They seem to have insisted on being paid their usual rates. That, in itself, is an indication that they didn’t think much of the case.

Yup. This has every hallmark of someone so thin-skinned and so determined to achieve some sort of vindication that, much like a compulsive gambler, they blew past every single red flag along the way and just kept doubling down.

Reminds me a bit of Michael Mann (though as I recall at least one of the less adventurous Ds settled earlier on so he probably had some war chest money to burn through).

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Another post from Eugene Volokh, another installment of cowardice and partisan hackery.

Anything else in the news catch your eyes lately, Volokh Conspirators?

Has John Eastman checked in?

Are all of you working to defend the Trump-related RICO group? If not, what’s the problem?

Beyond the obvious, I mean.

[Davy C]

You're free to start your own blog if you want control of what gets blogged about.

[Bored Lawyer]

Ah yes, the resident broken record.

(That's 20th Century technology for you Millenials. You can Google it.)

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Which broken record do you have in mind?

Prof. Volokh's vile racial slurs?

His fans' vile racial slurs and incessant bigotry?

The conservative Conspirators' desperate, damning silence with respect to the un-American activities of their fellow right-wingers, Donald Trump and John Eastman?

[Bill Poser]

I fail to see cowardice and partisan hackery in this post. Do you really mean to claim that any post on any topic other than one that advances your political views is "cowardice and partisan hackery"?

[dwshelf]

Now that's betting the farm.