A Los Angeles jury decided that the law firm of Atlanta developer Shi Shailendra, not the real estate bust, was to blame for unhappy investors’ losses when it hit Holland & Knight with a verdict for $34.5 million in compensatory damages on Thursday.
The investors sued Holland & Knight in Los Angeles Superior Court in May 2010, alleging the firm was responsible for their losses in real estate ventures with their former investment partner, Shailendra, that the firm had handled. They claimed that Shailendra defrauded them with Holland & Knight’s help, when the firm should have protected them. A keystone of the firm’s defense was that it didn’t have an attorney-client relationship with the plaintiffs, and instead handled real estate transactions for Shailendra Group as well as investment entities that the developer formed with the plaintiffs. Holland & Knight argued that the plaintiffs were unable to show that any of their losses on the real estate deals were from the firm’s actions.
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