The Hon James V. Selena bench slapps Avenatti

https://docdro.id/nWCxmQQ

First, a bit of background for those of you who have not been following the legal spectacle that is Michael Avenatti closely.

Avenatti is now facing  two related California Bar Court proceedings on, respectively, the State Bar's petition to place Avenatti on "involuntary inactive enrollment" (not eligible to practice law) pending a merits resolution of the Bar's petition to disbar Avenatti for 13 alleged rule violations relating to his former client Gregory Barella, based on written testimony showing that Avenatti: (1) provided Barella with an altered settlement agreement; (2) failed to notify Barella for a year of his receipt of a $1.6M settlement installment; (3) misappropriated from the client trust account Barela's $840,000 share of the settlement; (4) repeatedly lied to Barella about the status of the settlement in aid of concealing his misappropriation.

Avenatti sought, and received a 45 day continuance of the Bar Court trial on the petition for inactive enrollment (to late September), claiming he has been denied access to his Egan Avenatti law firm servers containing the client files for Barella (and the four other clients that the US Attorney's Office for the CDCA has charged Avenatti for embezzling a total of $9M from), and cannot properly defend himself from the Bar and criminal charges until he obtains them.

Avenatti similarly filed a motion to abate the substantive disbarment matter until a final judgment is issued in the CDCA criminal matter.

Avenatti also pointed out that the discovery issue would be resolved by the Judge presiding over the CDCA criminal matter (James V. Selena) when when judge Selena ruled on Avenatti's motion for "unfettered, unsupervised access" everything on EA's servers "relating to the entirety of Avenatti's law practice and business dealings".

And boy did Judge Selena rule.

It is plain from Avenatti’s own description of the content of the Subject Devices that the majority of the content is irrelevant to this case. …[par.] Whatever rights Avenatti may have as managing partner of EA LLP or as attorney to keep copies the firm’s books and records, they do not expand the Government’s obligations under Rule 16.

In addition to the Government’s obligation to produce in accordance with Rule 16, Avenatti has two other avenues to review the material on the Subject Devices. First, the Government has offered to allow Avenatti to inspect its forensic copies of the Subject Devices at the IRC-CI’s offices to allow him to identify relevant information. … Second, the Receiver has offered to allow Avenatti to review the Subject Devices under the Receiver’s supervision and with the payment of associated costs.

There are alternatives, and Avenatti has chosen not to avail himself of either offer  Unfettered access is simply a different turn of phrase to conduct a fishing expedition through the Government’s subpoenaed materials.

 Ouch!

In a footnote, Judge Selena also reminds Avenatti that things are run a little differently in criminal court:

What may be appropriate and required in the context of civil discovery does not translate to criminal discovery.

The significance of Judge Selena's ruling resonates beyond the discovery issue in the CDCA criminal proceeding because it eliminates Avenatti's ground for seeking continuances of not only the criminal matters pending in CDCA and in the SDNY (where Avenatti is also seeking access  to seized devices) but in the two Bar matters as well.

Avenatti is currently facing a trial on extortion charges in the SDNY in November, a trial on the 36 count criminal indictment in the CDCA in May, 2020, and a trial of the State Bar petition for involuntary inactive enrollment in September of this year.