Ex-Clients of Lawyer Who Sent Profane Emails 'Feared Him Physically'
California attorney Christopher Hook, now facing possible disciplinary sanctions for telling his opposing counsel to "eat a bowl of dicks," had sued his former clients in a separate matter months earlier, telling them he was under "a lot of personal stress right now."
January 08, 2020 at 05:10 PM
8 minute read
A month before sending 100 profane and threatening emails to opposing counsel in a homeowner insurance case, attorney Christopher Hook was at an arbitration hearing in a separate case in which he had sued his former clients for fraud.
His former clients "feared him physically," said their new lawyer, Catherine Weinberg, who met with them at another location before attending the arbitration hearing together.
"Apparently, he called yelling and screaming in a telephone call," said Weinberg, a partner at Buckner Robinson & Mirkovich in Costa Mesa, California. "He had been so unpredictable, and some of the anger he had exhibited in tone—not necessarily that he had used vile language, but the screaming and tone—left them in fear."
Hook's language in emails he later wrote in the homeowner insurance case—telling his opposing counsel to "eat a bowl of dicks" and "pay up fuckface"—shocked the legal industry and prompted a federal judge last month to demand Hook's resignation from the bar.
"I am going to do what I can to remove you from this profession," Central District of California Judge Otis Wright told Hook at a Dec. 16 sanctions hearing. Three days later, Wright said he would "be reporting Hook's misconduct to the California State Bar and will recommend disciplinary action."
Case documents in the fraud lawsuit Hook filed against his ex-clients, as well as interviews with lawyers, showed no record of his using profane language in other cases but do reveal questions about his professional behavior.
"Some of the language and some of the mannerisms he exhibited towards his own clients struck me as more than a little unusual," Weinberg said. "I did have a telephone conversation with him at one point where he very quickly became enraged and slammed down the receiver, which struck me as somewhat unprofessional."
In the months before filing the homeowner insurance lawsuit, Hook also revealed some personal stress. The clients he later sued for fraud had asked to hold off on a planned June 12 trial in order to raise the $20,000 retainer deposit he demanded from them. Hook instead terminated their legal contract. In a June 6 email, he wrote, "I am going through a lot of personal stress right now as well on a lot of levels."
In particular, he wrote, he had planned a trip with his wife and young daughter to Disneyland that weekend "to mark the birthday" of her older sister, who died in 2017 at the age of 1, he wrote in the email, which was attached to a notice of stay that Weinberg filed to arbitrate the fraud case.
"This is an important weekend to my family and my wife is having a very hard week," he wrote. "I am going through a lot of personal stress right now as well on a lot of levels."
Hook, of the Law Offices of Christopher G. Hook in Culver City, did not respond to a request for comment for this report, nor did his attorney, Heather Rosing, of Klinedinst in San Diego. At the sanctions hearing, Hook maintained that his emails were protected under the litigation privilege and the First Amendment and refused to voluntarily resign from the practice of law. On Friday, Hook asked Wright to give him until Jan. 14 to respond to his opposing counsel's request for $42,581 in fees and costs as sanctions.
A graduate of Thomas Jefferson School of Law and admitted to practice in California in 2008, Hook has no record of discipline. He began his career at other firms, including four years as a senior associate at Los Angeles-based Wood Smith Henning & Berman, according to Hook's LinkedIn profile. The firm's founding partner, Kevin Smith, did not return a call for comment, and Wyeth Burrows, managing partner in San Diego who worked with Hook on a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case, declined to comment.
According to the LinkedIn profile, Hook set up his own firm in 2013.
"He was aggressive, but not abusive," said Paul Cliff, of Gresham Savage Nolan & Tilden in San Bernardino, California, who defended a company against lawsuits Hook brought over a trucking permitting services firm's billing software. The cases settled in 2016. Cliff said Hook spun a "set of facts" into "much more than it needed to be."
"It seemed like something that should have been resolved with an apology and some basic conduct limitations, but it just went on and on for years," he said of the lawsuits.
In 2018, Hook filed a lawsuit on behalf of a family trust against a renter who allegedly was subleasing a portion of their gas station property to a food truck operator. In a 2018 email, Hook estimated that, in the "worst case scenario," the case would cost the family trust $30,250.
As trial neared, Hook demanded $20,000. But, on June 5, his clients—Melissa Heyman, Gregory Heyman and Barbara Heyman—said they did not have the funds. That prompted the June 6 email.
"I planned my practice and personal life for the month of May [which included an overseas vacation] and June around this trial," Hook wrote in the email. "This extremely abrupt and unexpected breach of our employment agreement is both personally very upsetting to me and stressful for reasons that I am sure you can appreciate."
Weinberg called the email "the oddest thing I've ever seen."
"I've never lost a child. I can't imagine the horror one would go through if I did," she said. "But I can't imagine disclosing such personal information."
Hook then sued his own clients for fraud, insisting they owed him $25,000 in unpaid legal fees and $25,000 in lost revenue, plus punitive damages that bumped the total to about $100,000. According to the complaint, Hook demanded payment for time he had cleared on his schedule for the planned trial, having "put off all other businesses for the week."
"The demands that he made of my clients, in my opinion, had no support in law," Weinberg said. "It caused me to wonder how much actual legal experience he had—just some of the methods he used—and it was like, are you just trying to bully people? His demands kept increasing."
Weinberg, who read news coverage about Hook's emails in the insurance case, said he never used profane or threatening language in her case. At the Oct. 2 arbitration hearing in Beverly Hills, Hook "spoke in a normal tone," she said, without "any outrageous physical behavior." Los Angeles attorney Vicki Temkin, of the Law Office of Vicki L. Temkin, represented Hook at the hearing. Temkin did not return a call for comment.
A month later, Hook was sending the emails to lawyers at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton after they refused to respond to his settlement demands in the homeowner insurance case. Hook referred to them as "gay boys," and threatened to waterboard representatives of Allstate Insurance Co., Sheppard Mullin's client. He also told Sheppard Mullin partner Peter Klee he would "get fucking tattooed across the face," adding, "I know where you live," and identifying his home address and his wife by name. The Sheppard Mullin lawyers sought a restraining order against Hook and flagged the emails in a Nov. 26 ex parte application, prompting Wright to order the sanctions hearing.
On Dec. 10, the arbitrators issued their statement of decision in the rental property case: the Heymans, who had already paid Hook more than $48,000, owed him only $5,400. They found that Hook's request for fees for time he blocked off, after withdrawing as counsel, was "unsupported and unsubstantiated" and that, in any case, he had failed to provide itemized billings in compliance with his own retainer agreement.
"The arbitrators are not convinced that he is entitled to additional sums after May 31, 2019, given his lack of itemized billing, the failure to provide any documents to successor counsel, and the failure to abide by his own retainer agreement," they wrote.
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