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| | Applicant Attorney Robert Pearman's Paralegal Accused Of Stealing $42,450 From Claimant
By Lonce LaMon - October 26, 2015
A California workers’ compensation applicant’s attorney, Robert Pearman, is back in the adjustercom news roughly two and a half years after he caused approximately $100,000 in damage to a Las Vegas hotel suite.
On March 30, 2013, Pearman was arrested in Clark County, Nevada, after refusing to make immediate restitution to the Encore Hotel, which is connected to Wynn Las Vegas and is part of the Steve Wynn, entrepreneur, business conglomerate. Pearman, after a destructive Bacchanalian feast in which he indulged with five women, was arrogant and grandiose towards the hotel staff and police in the midst of broken glass, damaged furniture, food on the walls, drapes, floors, and total disarray in the wake of a prodigious pandemonium. This mass destruction was to a two-story hotel suite which rented for $5,000 a night on week days and $7,500 a night on weekends according to Wynn 2010 advertising.
Now a civil law suit filed December 30th 2014 in the Los Angeles Superior Court, Van Nuys division, states Pearman’s paralegal, Leticia Berry, stole $42,450.00 from a claimant, Laura Rodriguez. Ms. Rodriguez had been represented in her workers’ compensation claim by Robert Pearman, which settled in August of 2013. The State of California Uninsured Employee Benefit Fund had sent two checks to The Pearman Law Corporation in October of 2013. One of the checks was payable to the Pearman firm for its fees, and the other was payable to the claimant, Laura Rodriguez, for $64,450.00.
Laura Rodriguez, upon receiving her check, confided to the
Pearman firm paralegal, Leticia Berry, that she did not have a bank account. Thus, Leticia Berry offered to deposit the claimant’s check into her own bank account for a fee of $300.00, and then subsequently give Rodriguez her settlement in cash minus the $300.00.
According to the writing in the complaint, Laura Rodriguez went with Leticia Berry to Chase Bank at 6300 Van Nuys Boulevard in Van Nuys, California. Rodriguez there endorsed the check for $64,450.00 over to Berry and, henceforth, Leticia Berry deposited it into her own account. Then five days later, the two went again to the same Chase Bank and Leticia Berry withdrew $7,000 which she gave to the claimant.
This trip repeated itself on November 21st 2013. Leticia Berry withdrew $7,000 again and gave it to the claimant; and then they went once again on November 25th 2013, as Leticia Berry withdrew $8,000 and gave it to the claimant.
By then, November 25th 2013, the claimant had received $22,000 from Pearman paralegal Leticia Berry and the remaining $42,450.00, belonging to the claimant, still remained in the paralegal’s bank account. However then, suddenly, the pattern and practice of giving the claimant her monies at her request changed. Leticia Berry refused to give Laura Rodriguez any more money.
Over the course of the next two weeks, paralegal Leticia Berry told claimant Laura Rodriguez that she had to borrow money to pay for her sister’s medical treatment, that Chase Bank charged over $16,000 for the three cash transactions, that she had to charge the claimant a $6,500 fee for holding the money, plus that there also manifested tax obligations that she had to cover.
The allegation in the complaint states Leticia Berry drained all of the claimant’s money out of her account through six further withdrawals during the month of December 2013. She wound up giving $22,000 to the claimant and kept $42,450 for herself.
As well, Laura Rodriguez made multiple and repeated requests for the rest of the money owed to her. She made multiple requests to meet with her attorneys, Robert Pearman and Kim Pearman (Robert Pearman’s father and supervisor); however, Leticia Berry for a time deflected these attempts. However, eventually the claimant did get to meet with the two Pearman lawyers. But by the time of the filing of the suit, the claimant alleged that even after meeting with the Pearmans, her remaining money due had not been paid to her.
Laura Rodriguez's workers' compensation claim took ten years to settle. It was a continuous trauma case with a date of injury of August 10, 2003. The case was Laura Rodriguez vs. Ysrael Magna Farias dba Taqueria Mr. Chivo.
Robert Pearman, Metro Police mug shot, March 2013.
A case management hearing was scheduled for September 17th 2015. The results of that hearing are not presently known by this writer. The documents on this case are not available electronically.
Other draft documents provided to this writer through a confidential source indicate that Leticia Berry has applied for student loans indicating she is not employed and has no income. She, however, ostensibly appears to have been employed by the Pearman law firm since 2003. Further allegations suggested by the source indicate the Pearmans may pay employees under-the-table, thus allowing Leticia Berry to allege no payroll income and fraudulently claim only support by a series of boyfriends and a fiance.
lonce@adjustercom.com ; Lonce LaMon, journalist; copyright Lonce LaMon and adjustercom; all rights reserved.
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