Mr. Ochrach represented a local Sacramento television station in a lawsuit for breach of an option agreement to sell the TV station to a national television network. The defendant was a multi-billion- dollar company, and it hired one of the largest law firms in the country to fight the case. The defendant fought every issue like it was life or death. The defendant made relatively small settlement offers and promised to “crush” the local TV station.

The turning point case when Mr. Ochrach took the deposition of the CEO and founder of the National television network. The CEO was defended in his deposition by four lawyers – all from law schools like Harvard who objected to almost every question. They made this a very difficult deposition. Yet, Mr. Ochrach persisted and eventually cornered the CEO into giving testimony that revealed the truth – and was devastating to the defendant’s defense of the case. Mr. Ochrach then deposed two other senior executives of the National television network – again extracting key testimony for his client’s case.

Within months of taking these depositions, defense counsel’s negotiating position changed dramatically. The defendant was offering to pay twice what it had previously offered. Mr. Ochrach settled the case obtaining $21 million from the defendant.

Our client, Cal, owned an oil change business which was a franchisee of a major oil company.  Under the franchise agreement, Cal had the right to grow his company by opening more and more stores, and then to sell the whole business back to the franchisor (the major oil company).  The language of the franchise agreement in this regards was ambiguous and certainly susceptible of different meanings.  The oil company claimed that Cal was limited in the number of stores he could open and sell back.  The reason the interpretation of the contract was so important is that, if our client was correct, the oil company would owe many millions of dollars.

The entire case hinged on the meaning of the word “or.”  That is, does the work “or” mean “and/or” or does it have only the disjunctive meaning of “or.”

Litigation was hard-fought.  The oil company hired one of the country’s largest law firms, who fought tooth and nail on every issue.  We took depositions around the country, seeking to prove that the oil company executives had the same understanding of the contract that Cal did.   Through these depositions — using key correspondence and notes written by the oil company executives — we were able to make a very good case that the word “or” as used in the parties’ contract meant “and/or,” which meant Cal could open many stores and then sell them all back to the company under a contractual formula that made such a transaction very valuable for our client.

Before trial, the major oil company paid my client $4 million to settle.

After a three week trial, a Sacramento County jury found Westlake Financial Services, a major Los Angeles car loan company, guilty of fraudulent lending practices, and awarded a Sacramento Dollar Rent a Car franchise over $400,000 in damages plus $2.7 million in punitive damages.  “The jury found that Westlake induced Dollar to enter into contracts by making false representations, overcharged interest, assessed unwarranted late charges, and failed to give credit for many monthly payments,” said Dollar’s attorney, Jeffrey H. Ochrach of Roseville.

The litigation stemmed from breaches of agreements under which Dollar bought and financed fleets of rental cars with Westlake.  Under their contracts with Dollar, Westlake was required to buy back most of these cars, thereby paying off the balance on the loan.  But Westlake refused to honor its contracts and then sued Dollar on the loans Westlake failed to pay off.  This dispute took five years to get to trial.  At trial, Westlake introduced many documents that Dollar asserted were highly questionable: “After five years of litigation, Westlake ‘found’ invoices, checks and other documents it somehow couldn’t find when we asked for them before trial.  These documents were supposed to help their case, but I think the jury recognized that Westlake fabricated these documents during trial and it cemented the notion that these guys were untrustworthy,” said Mr. Ochrach.

“One of the things that makes this case so satisfying is that Westlake sued Dollar for about $1 million, claiming enormous amounts of interest, late fees of $140,000 and denying receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments.  But the jury waded through all of the accounting evidence and determined that Dollar had fully paid these loans – in fact, Dollar overpaid.”  Mr. Ochrach commented, “I explained to the jury that the only way to stop this kind of fraud is to hit Westlake with a verdict that catches the attention of Westlake’s shareholders and the public.”  The jury’s message was loud and clear.