Trial lawyer Chris Carrington, co-founder of Richards Carrington, was featured in Law360 after he and the firm’s appellate counsel, Ruth Moore, secured an important ruling for his client from the Colorado Court of Appeals on Thursday in long-running litigation with that state’s attorney general.
Mr. Carrington’s win marks another defeat for the overzealous Colorado AG’s investigation into the billing practices of a law firm during the mortgage crisis. The AG’s office had asked the Court of Appeals to reconsider a sweeping 2017 trial court decision that cleared Castle Law Group of allegations of deceptive practices for its foreclosure work during the mortgage crisis.
On April 4, 2019, a three-judge panel agreed that the trial court’s ruling was proper. In addition, the appellate court overturned a $119,500 fine that had been assessed against Castle. The judges found that there was nothing improper about Castle’s financial relationships with a vendor that participated in the foreclosure work.
Writes Law360:
The appellate judges said the trial court had good reason to conclude no illegal price inflation had taken place.
“The ruling is the conclusion of a very long period for our clients,” Chris Carrington, an attorney for Castle, said. “The state put our clients through this for years.”
However, he added, the ruling could not undo the damage that the suit and the negative publicity did to the firm, which went from being one of the largest foreclosure firms in the state to closing its doors while the case was pending.
“This ruling slams the book shut on a wasteful government investigation that spanned more than five years, destroyed our clients’ business, and ruined a company that provided hundreds of jobs in Colorado. It was all based on meritless claims, as demonstrated by the rulings from the district court and the Court of Appeals,” said Mr. Carrington, who has considerable experience representing businesses involved in complex financial disputes.
In addition to Carrington, Castle is represented by Larry Pozner of Reilly Pozner LLP and Phillip A. Vaglica of Pan American Legal Services.
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