A Tarzana attorney involved in a class-action lawsuit related to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power billing debacle has been recommended for disbarment by the State Bar, it was announced Thursday.
The State Bar said that Judge Yvette Roland found Michael Jacob Libman culpable of all nine charges filed against him by the State Bar’s office of chief trial counsel.
The charges included ethical violations related to acts of collusion and egregious conflicts of interest, defying court orders, charging millions of dollars in unearned legal fees, and attempting to use Israeli hackers to access the emails of a judge and an attorney involved in the class action, according to Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona.
Unless an appeal is sought by either party, the disbarment recommendation will go to the California Supreme Court for its consideration.
“As the hearing department found, disbarment is appropriate because Mr. Libman’s misconduct was egregious and extensive, revealing a total disregard for his responsibilities as a lawyer,” Cardona said in a statement.
“It included knowingly acting as a figurehead attorney in collusive litigation, submitting false declarations to obtain $1.65 million in attorneys’ fees and compromising the court and private communications of an attorney and a sitting judge.”
The office of chief trial counsel stated it filed a notice of disciplinary charges against Libman in March 2024. The charges related to his using his client, Antwon Jones, as an unknowing pawn for a 2015 class action lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles that was filed with the intent that it would be settled on terms favorable to the city, according to the State Bar.
Libman allegedly signed his name to legal filings he did not create and knew were written by now-disbarred New York attorney Paul Paradis or California attorney Paul Kiesel, both of whom were representing the city of Los Angeles as outside counsel, court papers show.
Once the conflicts of interest were discovered, the judge overseeing the litigation, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle, appointed a new attorney, Brian Kabateck, to take over from Libman as class counsel. Kabateck was tasked with evaluating the prior settlement of the class action and assessing its fairness, Cardona said.
The office filed a second notice of disciplinary charges against Libman in June 2024. The single charge alleged that after Kabateck’s appointment, Libman plotted to hire Israeli hackers to hack the personal email and phone accounts of Kabateck and Berle, based on his unfounded hope that he would uncover something to demonstrate that they were acting corruptly in their handling of the LADWP litigation, the State Bar said.
In other actions and filings related to the DWP billing scandal to date, the office of chief trial counsel said it has assisted in disbarring one attorney and suspending a second, and is pursuing disciplinary charges against two others.