Advertisement
Advertisement

Trial lawyers face off as sex harassment claims fly against prominent San Diego attorney

 John Gomez
John Gomez in 2015, when he was among a group of lawyers representing the City of San Diego in a lawsuit against Monsanto.
(San Diego Union-Tribune)

Women, some of whom worked at John Gomez’s firm, say they experienced unwanted touching and coarse commentary. He denies it and sees a plot to steal business.

Share

Over the past month, accusations of past sexual harassment by one of San Diego’s best-known trial lawyers — and his counterclaim that they are part of a campaign to steal business — have roiled San Diego’s legal community.

A half-dozen women accused high-profile San Diego lawyer John Gomez of sexual harassment, unwanted physical contact and inappropriate comments and called on a leading legal organization to ban him from participating in conferences and other events. The accusations, spelled out in a series of letters, allege comments about women’s looks and bodies, sexually-charged conversations and unwanted touching.

For the record:

7:48 a.m. Aug. 1, 2021 An earlier version of the sub headline incorrectly said six women were all former employees of John Gomez. It has been changed to say only some of the women were.

The allegations stretch back more than a decade, and in one case to the mid-1990s.

Advertisement

This story is for subscribers

We offer subscribers exclusive access to our best journalism.
Thank you for your support.

Gomez, who did not respond to interview requests, denies some of the allegations in a lengthy court declaration. He contends that they are surfacing now as part of a concerted effort by lawyers from Los Angeles to lay the groundwork for their own move into San Diego.

In the letters, the women say they are speaking up now, in some cases years after the alleged conduct, out of support for each other and to stop Gomez from benefiting from speaking slots and prominent positions with legal organizations such as the influential Consumer Attorneys of California (CAOC).

Several also said they were motivated because the legal industry, while on the forefront of forcing change in other professions through high-profile lawsuits, has itself been slow to change.

“I think our profession lags behind in a lot of ways when it comes to protecting women,” said Courtney Rowley, a lawyer who was the first to publicly speak out against Gomez. “This is a pretty slow-moving, behind-the-times profession.”

High-dollar verdicts

Gomez is a nationally known trial attorney whose firm, Gomez Trial Lawyers, has won numerous high-dollar verdicts, including $106 million in the “American Beauty” wrongful death lawsuit against San Diego County and Kristin Rossum, convicted of murdering her husband in 2002. (The verdict was later reduced to $14.5 million.) He also got a $10 million settlement from Toyota in 2010 in connection with a fatal crash caused by sudden, unintended acceleration of a Lexus that killed a CHP officer, his wife, daughter and brother-in-law.

He advertises extensively on local television and has offices in downtown San Diego — complete with a full-scale courtroom on one floor.

Gomez said in his declaration the allegations have reached legal organizations nationwide. They have also circulated close to home.

On July 20, several San Diego Superior Court judges received a white envelope with no return address that contained copies of the letters from the women and other material. Presiding Judge Lorna Alksne had to tell judges who had received the packet with what she termed “inflammatory material” to dispose of it because it was an improper ex parte communication.

In letters and written statements sent to the CAOC, an organization for state trial lawyers, the women said Gomez should not be given speaking positions at the group’s events, or be allowed to serve on its board. The letters are also attached as exhibits to an application for a temporary restraining order filed in San Diego Superior Court by attorney Bibianne Fell, against Gomez and another lawyer in his firm, just days after the controversy surfaced. Fell worked in Gomez’s firm until 2019.

Two male attorneys in Los Angeles also called on the organization to conduct an independent investigation of the allegations.

Gomez resigned from the board and the organization earlier this month, before the organization could begin any investigation or take any official action, CAOC President Deborah Chang said in a statement.

It was one of several repercussions in the wake of the allegations. A complaint against Gomez has been filed with the State Bar.

Gomez also withdrew in late June as a speaker and financial sponsor of an event called Law-di-Gras, which brought together lawyers and doctors in Carlsbad in July to learn about medical-legal issues, according to Los Angeles lawyer Robert Simon, one of the coordinators of the event. His firm was a leading sponsor along with Gomez’s firm.

Gomez declined to answer questions from the Union-Tribune or comment on the accusations from the women despite several requests to do so. However, in the declaration — filed in San Diego Superior Court in response to a June 30 application for a restraining order — Gomez pointed to his record of hiring women: three of four partners are female, and 11 of 17 trial attorneys, he said. Since starting the firm in 2005, the “overwhelming number” of people he has hired have been women, he added.

Gomez also said the writings are part of a coordinated smear campaign by rival lawyers aimed at harming him and his business.

Justice HQ, a membership-based legal business launched by Los Angeles-based lawyer Robert Simon, provides office space, administrative support and a technology platform for solo lawyers and lawyers starting their own firms. The setup allows for collaboration with other lawyers, including experienced trial lawyers.

Simon was one of the two male lawyers who asked CAOC to investigate Gomez. The other, Los Angeles-based Gary Dordick, has his law firm listed as a “Premier Member” of Justice HQ. Those members agree to make attorneys and staff of their own firms available to collaborate with and work on cases with other solo lawyers who are also members.

The business has offices in Los Angeles and Santa Ana and is planning to open a location in San Diego, Simon said. But he dismissed the notion that the business and the accusations against Gomez are linked.

“Justice HQ has nothing to do with getting cases or taking market share,” he said.

‘I couldn’t live that way’

This is not the first time that Gomez has been accused of sexually harassing women. He and his law firm were sued twice in 2014.

In one of the cases the plaintiff, Alexa Zannoli, accused him of essentially offering a quid-pro-quo of a job in exchange for a sexual relationship. A second suit filed by Elizabeth Castelli, who worked at the Gomez firm as a paralegal for a little more than a year in 2012 and 2013, alleged Gomez flirted with her, made sexualized comments and touched her in “offensive and sexually suggestive ways.”

Gomez vehemently denied those accusations. The Zannoli suit ended up going to private arbitration and settling, with Gomez agreeing to make a donation to a charity that helps female victims of sexual abuse and harassment. Court records show Castelli’s suit was dismissed in early 2020 after being sent to arbitration. Castelli could not be located for comment and her lawyer declined to discuss the case when contacted.

The latest accusations seem to have started in late June, when Dordick said he would not appear on a panel with Gomez at the Law-Di-Gras conference. His move was triggered by a conversation he said he had with Rowley. Both are high-powered plaintiff’s lawyers, and Rowley worked for the Gomez firm on some cases more than a decade earlier.

In an interview, Dordick said he spoke to Rowley about her work with Gomez and her experiences there. Dordick said he decided he would not participate with Gomez on a panel.

“I spoke to her and found her extremely compelling,” Dordick said. Around the same time, Simon, whose firm was co-sponsoring the Carlsbad conference with Gomez, said Dordick sent him an email about his concerns with Gomez.

Simon said in a June 28 email to CAOC president Deborah Chang that when he asked Gomez about it, Gomez at first said he would provide evidence to counter the allegation — but then shifted and said either he would be allowed to speak on the panel, or he would pull out of the program. In the end he withdrew, Simon said.

Dordick asked the CAOC for an investigation into the claims, as did Simon in the email to Chang. On that same day, the organization began to receive the letters from five other women.

The Union-Tribune contacted five of the women as well as three other lawyers who worked at the law firm both before and after the public filings of the 2014 lawsuits.

All but two of the people contacted did not want to be quoted in the story, though the women confirmed they had written the letters, which were attached as an exhibit in the restraining order case file.

Rowley wrote that as a young lawyer in 2010 through 2012 she met Gomez at a lawyers conference and was then contracted to work on some cases with his firm. In the beginning Gomez was “handsy,” touching her and making her uncomfortable, she recalled. That was not uncommon in her experience in the legal culture, Rowley said.

She wrote that the conduct became more aggressive and that Gomez sent her a nude selfie, unsolicited. After that, she wrote, “It became clear that in order to work on cases with his firm I had to be willing to participate in a quid pro quo relationship. I decided I couldn’t live that way.”

Rowley wrote that when she rejected his advances, she was paid for her work on a single case, and was not asked to work on other cases. She said she did not speak up at the time because, as a successful lawyer, Gomez had power and prestige and “substantial sway over the future of my career and income.”

Rowley said she did not come forward when the 2014 lawsuits were filed because she was scared to speak out against Gomez.

Statements from other women described other behavior that distressed them.

One woman worked for the law firm for three years ending in 2015. She wrote that she heard Gomez comment on women’s bodies, and make other “inappropriate comments.”

Another wrote that Gomez harassed her as far back as 1996, when he worked as a federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Diego. She said he sent her explicit emails about sexual acts. She said she did not report it at the time because she did not think she would be believed.

She took a job in 2014 at the Gomez firm, working as a paralegal for Fell, another lawyer who also has written a letter alleging harassment against Gomez. She said she witnessed Gomez make inappropriate sexualized comments about women.

Fell worked as a lawyer at the firm for five years, leaving in December 2019 to start her own practice. While there, she said in her letter, Gomez would make comments about his anatomy and about sex.

“On multiple occasions when I was out of town he encouraged me to have sex with a stranger,” she wrote, adding that he once tried to get her to agree to a competition where the first person to sleep with a stranger got $100. Fell said she wrote to CAOC when she heard Gomez was pushing back against Rowley’s accusations.

“When I saw Courtney out there and vulnerable I got involved,” she said in an interview with the Union-Tribune conducted before she took out the restraining order against Gomez and another lawyer in his firm on June 30.

Dueling complaints

In his court declaration Gomez said Fell once spoke on his behalf in a prior claim, and that she said then he never sexually harassed her. While she worked for him, Fell never complained of sexual harassment or any inappropriate behavior by him, he wrote, and at times made her own sexually charged comments in the office.

He also rejected an allegation Rowley made that he had sexually assaulted her a decade earlier. “Only within the past two weeks did I learn of some allegation that I had somehow sexually assaulted Mrs. Rowley 10 years ago,” he said. He called it a “false allegation,” and further contended in the declaration that he had a consensual relationship with Rowley in 2011-2012.

Courtney Rowley denied in her letter ever having a consensual relationship with Gomez.

In his declaration Gomez also pointed to Nicholas Rowley, another lawyer and husband of Courtney. The two began dating after Gomez said his relationship with Courtney Rowley ended, and when Nicholas Rowley learned of it, he “screamed at me on the phone and refused to appear or speak at events where I was in attendance.” He said he attributed Nicholas Rowley’s behavior to “his irrational jealousy.”

Nicholas Rowley said his displeasure stems from his wife’s allegations. He filed a State Bar complaint against Gomez on behalf of his wife that contains assault allegations.

Court records indicate that two weeks ago both sides had agreed to dismiss the restraining order application, apparently ending that battle for now.

After the allegations surfaced — some of the writings appeared on a Instagram account called “Gossip Lawyer” — others took notice.

Deborah Wolfe, a San Diego attorney who specializes in plaintiffs work but now focuses on legal malpractice and ethics, once represented a woman who had to give a deposition in one of the prior lawsuits against Gomez. She wrote to Dordick supporting the call to ban Gomez from CAOC events. Wolfe, who said she is not a competitor of Gomez, also filed a State Bar complaint against him.

“I just felt as a person in my particular area of practice, that it takes a lot of guts to stand up and say this happened to you and put your credibility against this guy who is well known, successful and has lots of money,” Wolfe said in an interview. “It needs to be addressed.”

Gomez — whose law-firm commercials tend to emphasize his willingness to fight for his clients — also wants the State Bar involved. In his declaration, he said Fell’s restraining order filing was an effort to get the accusations against him in the public realm and was done in bad faith — and she should be reported to the State Bar.

Advertisement