Kirby & Kirby LLP

Mark Mofid _{on Google}

Sep 3rd, 2021

Michael Kirby represented my ex-wife in family law matters between 2017 and 2021. He was lead counsel on a “Set Aside” filing against our divorce agreement. One would assume that only a sophisticated family law attorney (a CFLS- certified family law specialist) would contemplate such an effort, not Michael Kirby- someone with virtually no family law knowledge or experience. At a cost of several million dollars to both sides, Michael Kirby failed miserably during his 2018 trial that lasted 11 days. No portion of the divorce was “Set Aside.” Michael Kirby argued at trial that his client was defrauded into a one sided divorce agreement and was under duress by virtue of threats to widely distribute her self-made images of an extra-marital affair that I discovered during our marriage unless she signed our original divorce agreement in 2015. It was found at trial to be both a compelling story and a complete lie.
This same fabrication that Michael Kirby’s client was extorted using these images into signing a divorce agreement was sent by letter to the City Attorney’s office on April 7, 2017 demanding that I be prosecuted shortly after their office rejected her initial efforts. Michael Kirby sent an email to my attorneys asking for a settlement meeting to be held on April 26, 2017 without mediators present. At this now not-so-secret settlement meeting, Michael Kirby demanded $6.5 million dollars. A second meeting was held on May 1, 2017 in the presence of a retired federal judge who advised all parties that there was no legal mechanism to use criminal threats to exert leverage in the settlement of a civil dispute. Shortly after the second meeting, one of my attorneys alerted the City Attorney that the threat of this criminal misdemeanor charge was being used to exert financial leverage. That evening, on May 3, 2017, Charles La Bella (his co-counsel) emailed a partner attorney at the Duane Morris law firm that the parties were not in settlement discussions, that there were no ongoing negotiations and that if this was being represented to anyone it would be untrue. Michael Kirby sent a confirmatory email that La Bella’s description was accurate. Michael Kirby and Charles La Bella were both lying.
Charges were filed in June 2017. Another of my attorneys notified the City Attorney in October 2017 that Michael Kirby was extorting me. On November 3, 2017, the afternoon before the trial, Michael Kirby emailed the Procopio law firm with a revised $4.5 million settlement package. According to a partner at the Procopio firm who then emailed defense attorneys from two other firms, Michael Kirby called him and stated that he was going to lie in his electronic communications to their law firm that his client would not violate her subpoena to avoid getting trapped into another charge of extortion but that if I signed the agreement transferring $4.5 million to his client, he and his client would call the City Attorney to confirm that she would drop charges. A partner attorney from the Procopio law firm signed a sworn statement with the court that Michael Kirby should have never involved himself in this case and that his prosecution of fabricated claims at this trial at a cost of several million dollars resulted in a tragedy.
It is regrettable that the People of the State of California, state government officials, prosecutors, judges and jurors participating in an important civic function were unknowing participants in a breathtaking financial fraud. Zealous advocacy to represent a client is one thing. It is completely something else for an attorney to collude with his client in a multi-million dollar financial scam. Michael Kirby is not the first attorney to think about witness tampering his client in a criminal trial for a multimillion dollar payoff, he is simply one of the few stupid enough to try it. The Special Operations Division of the San Diego District Attorney Office opened a criminal investigation into Michael Kirby in the Spring of 2021.