In 1994, during registration for my last semester of law school at South Texas College of Law, I just happened to notice a flyer tacked to the Bulletin Board outside of the law library. The flyer had large print at the top stating that “People Living With HIV and AIDS Need Your Help”. Since I went to law school for the specific purpose of learning how to help disadvantaged people fight for their legal rights, I thought what a great course. I could think of no group at that time (early to mid 1990s) that was being any more discriminated against than people living with HIV and AIDS. Back then, if your employer, or landlord became aware that you had HIV/AIDS, there was a good chance that (out of fear) they would come up with some pretextual (false) reason to fire you from your job, or kick you out of your home.
Taking the HIV and the Law course eventually resulted in interviewing for a job and being hired in 1995 at the prestigious litigation and real estate law firm (Williams, Birnberg & Andersen, LLP). I spent the next 30 years at Williams, Birnberg & Andersen, LLP, including 24 years as a partner.
During my early years of tenure at Williams, Birnberg & Andersen, LLP, I was proud to provide pro bono (volunteer) legal services to Montrose Clinic, and represent many people living with HIV/AIDS by sending demand letters and pursuing various lawsuits, including suits in the employment, landlord/tenant and medical service areas. I even successfully represented a person living with AIDS in a medical negligence lawsuit against one of the largest pharmacy chains in America for negligently dispensing a prescription for Norvir (the drug of choice at that time for treatment of persons with HIV) with Neoral, an immunosuppressant used for treating transplant patients (the exact opposite of what an HIV patient needs). To this day I am still haunted by one of the defense attorneys telling me “so what, your client had AIDS, he was going to die anyway”.
For the majority of my career at Williams, Birnberg & Andersen, LLP, I very actively prosecuted numerous very significant personal injury and medical malpractice lawsuits on behalf of clients with catastrophic injuries, as well as prosecuting and defending complex real estate lawsuits.
In the mid 2000s, there was a subprime mortgage crisis in the nation caused by an avalanche of fraudulent loans made possible (some would say made inevitable) by the then newly created concept of the “no document” loan (e.g. lenders approving loan applications with no proof/no supporting documentation whatsoever of anything stated in the loan application). The fraud was so rampant in these “no document” loans that new terms and phrases were coined to describe them; “Liar Loans” and “NINJA”loans (No-income, No-job, No-Assets). Sprinkle in pressure from lenders on property appraisers to continue to increase the value of their appraisals and you eventually get an explosion of non performing (bad) loans resulting in loan defaults.
During this time there were many criminal and civil suits filed against numerous vendors of services in the real estate industry. In my experience; the culprits were often greedy, unethical, and fraudulent mortgage brokers and property appraisers, and negligent lenders. Title companies that were completely innocent of any wrongful acts were often viewed as “deep pocket” targets and named as defendants in the civil suits.
The most difficult of these suits to defend were the suits prosecuted by the very lenders that caused the crisis in the first place by loaning out money based on the Liar Loans. After the explosion of bad loans in the “traunches” of Liar Loans that had been packaged and subsequently sold on wall street to investors; the lenders often tried to tag other entities (like title companies) as also being responsible for the massive losses. These lenders were vigorously represented by very aggressive and talented teams of attorneys and para-legals at large law firms that tried everything ethically they could think of to pin fault on the title companies. I single handedly (no team of attorneys, no team of para-legals) successfully defended various title companies that were unjustly targeted in these lawsuits, including some very significant mass action lawsuits (suits with anywhere from 50 to 500 plaintiffs) during this period.
I still remember deposing the CFO of a major financial institution that was suing one of my clients when I asked why on earth they thought it was a good idea to loan out hundreds of millions of dollars based on loan applications with no proof whatsoever of anything stated in the application; and I got the response: “because that was just how the program was set up”. When I deposed low level loan processors and asked them why they didn’t question loan applications that obviously seemed inaccurate, if not outright fraudulent (e.g. applicant in their early 20s that stated that they had post graduate college degrees and were making a high 6 figure salary for the previous 3 years); I got the response: “we were told not to question anything on the application, no matter what”. One of these suits was so big (and seeking such a large amount of money) that the attorneys were under a standing court order to reserve the entire third week of every month only for depositions in that case. Solely defending these case took approximately 5 years of my career at Williams, Birnberg & Andersen, LLP.
My practice is now almost exclusively limited to representing buyers and sellers of real estate, real estate agents and brokers, title companies, and escrow officers in real estate transactional work. As a result of having reviewed approximately around 800 guarantee files as part of defending the title companies and escrow officers that closed the files in the above referenced Liar Loan lawsuits; I am uniquely experienced to consult with title companies and escrow officers on how best to defend against lawsuits.
After almost 50 years in business we closed our firm, Williams, Birnberg & Andersen, LLP, and the remaining partners and employees opened Greco Murphy Law LLP to continue to provide legal services and representation to our clients.
I have been married to the same special person for 37 wonderful years. I enjoy watching wildlife, riding my Harley Davidson, repairing broken equipment/stuff, working out, doing yoga and sharing my home with furry family members (currently 1 Rhodesian Ridgebacks and 3 English Bulldogs, including my newest rescue adoption, Lola).
