I suppose within the last few years the

most common contract disputes I’ve

handled

have been lease disputes commercial

leases

within the last

three or four years I’ve had as many as

11

uh uh lease disputes

pending in the southern district of

Texas

involving

projects down there that one of my main

clients had

we had to win those cases

they were contract disputes they were

obligations that the landlord had that

was not fulfilling

and so we sued them

and they mustered a huge fight because

the landlord had sold these leases to a

Reit a real estate investment trust and

they’ve got Deep Pockets

and so that was kind of what we did we

did that lawsuit

and

we won those cases

other cases involve

uh someone who is hired

to be a representative of an entity in

Australia for example this is one of my

cases

to develop facilities in the United

States

and so my client went out and bought

real estate property around the United

States

and then the company in Australia

told him that they weren’t they weren’t

going to reimburse them for those

Acquisitions because they were in

financial Straits

so we sued them we took him to a jury

trial here in Maricopa County

we ended up with a 60 million dollar

judgment against them after the jury

trial

so they filed insolvency in Australia

and then I end up in the end up in the

uh bankruptcy courts

in Wilmington Delaware where they’re

trying to uh have a foreign insolvency

proceeding recognized by the bankruptcy

courts in the United States

so we had to fight that up there

because no one ever heard

of an insolvency international

insolvency you don’t hear about those

very often

so there were evidentiary hearings that

went on with that and I learned

something again about large large law

firms in that case

that people should understand in the

bankruptcy court I only do adversary

proceedings

adversary proceedings in this Equitable

Court which is a bankruptcy court it’s

not an article three court They Don’t

Really apply the Rules of Evidence as

strictly as they do in an article 3

Court that’s a United States District

Court that you think of as a district

judge at the courthouse

so what they do for direct exam

examinations in these types of cases the

other the other side typically

prepares an affidavit

and they submit it to the judge and they

did in this case so judge our witness of

course is in Brisbane Australia we’ve

have him remoted in here

but to save time since it’s 2 A.M in

Brisbane right now

we’ll just use this declaration as our

uh direct examination and Mr Williams

may now cross-examine the witness

the judge says uh

is that okay with you Mr Williams I said

no

uh I don’t want to cross-examine an

outfit I want him

to ask his client questions

so the judge looked at the lawyer who

was from one Rockefeller Plaza in

downtown New York and he had four

lawyers with him in two paralegals he

said well John your honor that’s not the

way we typically do that in bankruptcy

court he says well we don’t typically do

that because the other lawyer agrees but

Mr Williams is not agreeing so you need

to do direct examination on your client

now this is a lawyer charging twelve

hundred dollars an hour

really experienced from a prestigious

Law Firm who began to act questions and

I began objecting and the judge was

substaining every one of my objections

finally the lawyer said well your honor

I’ve never done a direct examination

before

and the judge says and you’re not doing

a very good job that’s why I’m sustained

Mr Williams’s objections maybe one of

those other lawyers with you can ask a

question that’s correctly so you got to

be careful about what you’re getting or

what happens in the courtroom even with

the large law firm and by the way I I

won that case we then ended up with

ancillary proceedings here in Arizona

now did we collect anything no we got

offsets for claims they had against us

because they truly did go insolvent and

unfortunately there wasn’t money to

collect but I have on my wall right here

uh an award that was given to me by the

State Bar for having one of the largest

jury verdicts in Arizona that year

so those are those are typical of the

sorts of cases that I do they’re very

complex they often involve

constitutional issues uh contract issues

uh nuances those sorts of things that

happen