Ho v. Chang Lawsuit

NOTE:
The following case Ho vs Minton (case #19-CIV-07253) has settled and per the settlement agreement, we will not be writing anything additional to what already has been written prior to settlement. For those of you who have been following this lawsuit and the underlying lawsuit (case #17-PRO-00973), and those of you who were former clients of John D. Minton and his firm AYHM+H, LLP that have had similar experiences to what we went through, we cannot discuss this case or our experiences from this date 11/1/2024 forward. Everything below was written before the settlement.

We sued Attorney John D. Minton for malpractice.
Here is the link to the case on the Superior Court of San Mateo County website (type in 19-CIV-07253 in the search field and SUBMIT).
Here is the link to the case on the trellis website.

Minton and his firm AYHMH screwed over other independent clients with the same type of behavior, and we were told they were in the process of filing a state bar complaint, which we thought was a good idea.

Here are our claims for Negligence (malpractice) and Breach of Contract (fee dispute):

Trust B:
During the underlying lawsuit, we discovered through subpoenaed documents that our father sold a Trust B asset, specifically the property at 757 3rd Ave, San Bruno, on January 16, 1998 and failed to put the proceeds back into Trust B, as required by law. Instead, $23,000 and $17,000 were issued in checks to Debby Chang, and the remainder was deposited into Trust A. Of this remainder, $145,200 was loaned to Debby Chang, who has only partially repaid the loan. Additionally, in 2011, two checks totaling $10,900 were written from the Trust B checking account to Debby Chang.

Defendant Minton was informed of these issues through several communications. We specifically alerted him to the improper handling and transfer of Trust B assets to Debby Chang. We requested Minton to explore whether Trust B could pursue a claim against Trust A for the return of the misappropriated funds and to address the recovery of assets wrongfully obtained by Debby Chang. Despite this, Minton failed to take appropriate action, which led to the expiration of the statute of limitations for pursuing claims related to the misappropriation of Trust B assets.

Despite our requests for Minton to pursue legal action for the return of the misappropriated Trust B funds, Minton's response indicated a reluctance to take action. He expressed a preference to “avoid anything that can be construed as an attack on James.” At the time, Minton’s firm was also involved in the administration of Trust B, and his failure to act on these issues resulted in the loss of potential claims and prevented us from recovering the misappropriated assets.

When Minton decided to drop us 2 months before trial, leaving us hanging without representation, we talked to many probate attorneys in search of new counsel. Several different firms, e.g., Mathew Matiasevich (from Evans, Latham and Campisi law firm), Seth Skootsky and Bob Cross (from Skootsky & Der law firm), and Timothy Barteau (from Keystone Law Group) told us to pursue Trust B losses with Debby Chang, in addition to the funds she stole from Trust A. When we brought up the Trust B stolen funds with our replacement counsel Jim Cilley, he thought about how to pursue the stolen funds, but unfortunately told us that we were past the statute of limitations. He said that Minton should have started the action, but unfortunately we are beyond the statute of limitations of 1-year.

Lis Pendens:
After recording notices of Lis Pendens on properties in Los Angeles and Redwood City, Minton invested 5.3 hours on 10/23/17 reviewing recent court opinions on Lis Pendens statutes. Despite this research, he failed to update the Amended Petition on November 15, 2017, to include the necessary real property claim that would substantiate a property interest for these filings. In fact, he assured us, “This is a good example of trusting us on legal process. We know that your goal is to get the money. However, the alternative remedy is the sole basis for the lis pendens that we filed, because you can only put a lien on a property if one of the requests in the legal proceeding in question is to change title to the property” (sic). To the contrary, his oversight in not including a real property claim led to significant legal complications. Minton’s failure to properly address this critical aspect resulted in Judge Novak granting the opposing counsel's Motion to Expunge Lis Pendens. Judge Novak stated in her ruling, “The expungement of the lis pendens is not this Court opining on the merits of the underlying claims of fraud. That's not what I'm doing by expunging the lis pendens in either piece of property, so I don't want it to appear that way. It's because of this Court adopting what the majority rule in California courts has been as to whether or not the pleadings as presented state a real property claim. And I don't believe that they have.”

First, had Minton provided accurate legal guidance, we would not have recorded the Lis Pendens and could have avoided the associated fees and costs for contesting Ms. Chang's Motion to Expunge. Minton’s omission of a real property claim from our petition is a legal error, demonstrates his incompetence, and constitutes malpractice. Second, if he had included this claim from the outset, the issue with the Lis Pendens would likely have been resolved properly in that initial hearing by Judge Novak, without necessitating further action, additional fees, and costs incurred in attempting to fix Minton’s legal mistake.

Instead, we were forced to amend our petition to incorporate the real property claim and revisit the issue by re-recording the Lis Pendens, filing associated motions, attending hearings, and consulting with our attorneys.

Abandonment and Case Delays Resulting from Minton’s Errors:
Defendant Minton misrepresented his preparedness for trial, falsely claiming on August 30, 2018, that he was ready to proceed and could be trial-ready within a week. At that time, the trial was scheduled for November 26, 2018. By September, he agreed to postpone the trial as the last thing he would do before abandoning us.

Minton’s claims of readiness were misleading as neither party was close to completing discovery. At that point, only one deposition had been conducted, no witnesses had been interviewed or scheduled, and no expert witnesses had been secured. This lack of progress was contrary to his claims of being trial-ready.

Minton’s failure to accurately represent his preparedness contributed to delays in the case. These delays ultimately led to Debby’s Motion to Dismiss under the 5-year statute. These delays and the need for additional procedural steps were a direct result of Minton's failure to accurately represent his trial preparedness.

Fee Dispute:
There were numerous issues with Minton's billing, including excessive charges, billing for unnecessary work, double billing, block billing, and billing for work not performed.

Minton said if we did some of the work we would save on attorney fees, but it turned out that even though we did most of the work on the case, we still got an extremely high bill. When we had to find new counsel, all of the attorneys (100%) we talked to said we paid too much for what was done. Our new attorney wrote to us: "The fees that you paid to John Minton seem to be on the high side given the status of the case when we took over." During the time of representation, even though we questioned the high billing, Minton would occasionally reduce the bill by a small token amount, and we always paid the reduced billing in order to maintain a good working relationship with our lawyer. We believe that even the discounted fees charged were excessive and improper.

Minton completed the following work (after we did the lion’s share of the work) for our case before he said we were ready for trial and then dropped us: Initial Petition, Amended Petition, Written Discovery Requests, Written Discovery Responses, Motion to Compel, and two half-day depositions of the caregiver. He billed over $173,000 for this, and our contention is that he overcharged by $104,000.

Much of their work product was what we wrote with virtually no modification. They essentially had to cut and paste, and they did not simply bill for it, but they over-billed for this work. Mr. Lassen told us this was his first probate case, and his inefficiency was prevalent. Mr. Minton continued to step in, relegating Mr. Lassen’s work as duplicative or excessive, and more generally we should not have to pay for Mr. Lassen’s training during his “internship period.”