ALL PURPOSE LAWYER

I am John Brown "All Purpose Lawyer" but don't confuse that term with "general practitioner", that I am not. People often ask me what I specialize in, and I always reply "Everything that walks in the front door, because I have done it all". This is not braggadocio as I have done a lot of remarkable things in my years of practice, having landmark cases In fields as varied as criminal law, family law, insurance law, fraud, conspiracy and food poisoning torts, all reported in the California courts of Appeal and the California Supreme Court. But, it is not completely true either, as I am always looking for and often find that something walking in my front door is something that I have never seen before which captures my interest, and the result is that I spend most of my time working on it. For instance, an auctioneer client that I represented for many years called me a couple of years ago and told me that she had bought the contents of a storage locker sight unseen and upon entry discovered a million dollars of fine art inside. She asked me if she could keep it. Fortunately , I told her that I would have to research it. I 'm glad I did, not only for my client's sake, but also having studied the subject and winning the rights of my client to the works of art, I found the subject so interesting that I fully intend to devote more time to art law. I won't say that I am a "single case" lawyer, although I once was described as a hit man lawyer taking on one big adversary at a time. I don't think that Bank of America or Amana Corporation want any further part of me, but you can ask them any time you like.

I have had a million dollar medical mal-practice settlement, almost as large a product liability settlement and hundred thousand dollar jury verdicts in fraud and personal injury cases, but the things that made my dear departed Irish mother most proud was the $130,000.00 in attorney fees that State Farm Insurance Company had to pay me where their attorneys failed to bury me in paper, and the $11,000.00 that the Bank of America had to pay me for attorney fees as a result of a federal court order where it and its attorneys tried an end run which didn't work. As for me, I don't play those games, and I have never been disciplined by the State Bar. I was raised in Los Angeles, and went to Holy Cross School, Cathedral High School and Fremont High School before joining the United States Navy on my seventeenth birthday, July 29, 1943. I was trained as an aviation radioman and assigned to the Navy Air Corps as an Air Crewman in Squadron VC97 flying off carriers in a TBM Torpedo plane where I saw combat at both Iwo Jima and Okinawa. I hold the Air Medal and several lesser decorations for that service.

Following the war, I attended College at the University of Utah, Loyola University Los Angeles, and received a Juris Doctor degree from Southwestern University. I have been married four times which, if nothing else, proves that I am not a quitter. I have four grown children and seven grandchildren. I worked for one year for Farmer's Insurance Truck Exchange as a claims adjuster in 1952, but opened my own office in Pasadena, California in 1953, and have been self employed ever since. I stayed several years in Pasadena, and then transferred my practice to Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles from 1967 to 1971. In 1971, I was approached by Harvey Knox who needed me to bail him out of a problem he was having in the development of the Malibu Bay Club, a condominium project located on the ocean at the Los Angeles/Ventura County Line. You may remember Harvey or have heard about him. He was a pal of Howard Hughes and Greg Bautzer, and the father of Ronnie Knox, the All American football player on UCLA's national championship team in the fifties.

Harvey made me an offer that I couldn't refuse, and I gave up my practice in Los Angeles and moved to Ventura County, a move I have never regretted. The problems Harvey Knox had with the Malibu Bay Club seemed insurmountable, even to the judge that tried the case, who told me that he didn't think I could win it. But, although the case took a year to try, I did win it big time, and Harvey made millions because of it. I have practiced in Ventura County since that time, but I did venture out to try a high profile case in Pennsylvania Federal Court, middle district, which took three months to complete, and I have appeared in the Supreme Courts of Nevada and Colorado, as well as the Federal Court of Appeals, 3rd district. I have also traveled extensively throughout Europe, Southeast Asia, Russia and the Mid-east on behalf of client entrepreneurs. I was in Kuwait while the oil wells were still burning during the gulf war. I have important contacts in Washington D.C., Jakarta Indonesia, and elsewhere throughout the world. I know how the system works and how to get things done.

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