High-profile plaintiffs’ attorney John Gomez — whose near-ubiquitous television commercials seek to represent those who have been wronged, injured or otherwise damaged — has taken the offense in an ugly dispute with one of the premier law associations in San Diego.
The founder of Gomez Trial Attorneys filed an eye-popping lawsuit against Consumer Attorneys of San Diego, a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving and promoting the interests of local trial attorneys that until recently included Gomez.
Gomez, who served as president of the association in 2012, alleges the association is now working to undermine his law practice by perpetuating accusations that he is a serial sexual harasser of women.
The group’s board of directors voted two years ago to remove Gomez as a member.
He also accuses the group of planting a 2021 report in The San Diego Union-Tribune that explored several years of sexual harassment complaints against him, and he acknowledges in the lawsuit that he used to drink to excess and send inappropriate overnight text messages, among other things.
The suit, fashioned as a breach of contract action, claims that association leaders, and a handful of rival attorneys in particular, conspired to besmirch his name and damage his law practice.
“This lawsuit tells the story of how a jealous husband, a delusional and ungrateful lawyer embracing an imaginary ‘victim’ narrative, and a collection of white males with financial motives joined together with CASD to invent a collection of ‘fantastic lies’ and to fraudulently and maliciously attack, bully and harm the largest Latino-founded, and one of the most gender-diverse and feminist-forward law firm in California,” the complaint says.
Consumer Attorneys of San Diego is a trade group of local litigation specialists that dates back to at least 1960. It counts as members some of the best-known lawyers in the county. The group did not respond to a request for comment on the Gomez lawsuit this past week.
The legal complaint was filed last Monday in San Diego Superior Court. It stretches over 38 pages, not including dozens of pages of supplemental exhibits aimed at supporting its allegations.
The document lays out a years-long dispute between Gomez and a handful of other lawyers, many of whom had previously worked at Gomez Trial Attorneys or accused Gomez of sexual harassment or assault.
In his lawsuit, Gomez acknowledged that he was not without blame in some of his behavior.
“Gomez will be the first to admit that he has made mistakes in his life,” the lawsuit says. “During a period of time more than 10 years ago, Gomez drank too much and stayed out late.”
Many of the lawyers identified in the lawsuit also are associated with the Consumer Attorneys of San Diego and its leadership. None were named as defendants in the case.
“I have remained quiet for the past 2½ years because people have continually urged me simply to ‘let the truth come out,’” Gomez said by email. “And so now the time has finally come for me to stand up for myself, my law firm and my family.
“I have not named anyone else as a defendant because I would rather not be suing anyone at all,” he added. “I just want this all to stop and clear my name.”
According to the complaint, Consumer Attorneys of San Diego hosts many events and speakership opportunities that can raise the profiles of members and generate future business. Gomez said he and his associates were wrongly voted out of the group.
“Defendant CASD did so in violation of CASD’s bylaws, in breach of its membership contracts with Gomez, GTA and its lawyers, and in gross violation of its fiduciary duties,” the lawsuit says.
Some of the sexual harassment allegations leveled against Gomez were reported by the Union-Tribune in 2021, after a series of letters signed by a half-dozen alleged victims began circulating through the San Diego courthouse.
The women told the newspaper they wrote the letters to support one another and to prevent Gomez from raising his profile by accepting speaking engagements and memberships in legal organizations like the influential Consumer Attorneys of California.
Gomez withdrew from at least one speaking engagement as a result of the letters. He also resigned from the board of the Consumer Attorneys of California and withdrew his membership.
At the same time, however, Gomez denied the accusations and said they were contrived by lawyers in Los Angeles and San Diego seeking to grow their market share of personal-injury legal work by damaging his reputation.
The complaint also acknowledges that Gomez was sued for alleged sexual harassment twice in 2014, and was accused of sexually assaulting another attorney more than a decade ago. Gomez denied all of those accusations as well.
In one of those suits, a woman accused Gomez of offering her a job in exchange for a sexual relationship. He said in his lawsuit that he mistakenly thought she was interested in dating him.
“Gomez accepts responsibility for that mistake,” the lawsuit states. “He was married at the time, should not have been flirting outside of his marriage and should not have been texting while intoxicated. He is sorry for any harm he caused.”
The other lawsuit was brought by a Gomez Trial Attorneys paralegal who said Gomez flirted with her, made sexualized comments and touched her in “offensive and sexually suggestive ways.”
Records show one case was settled after Gomez agreed to make a charitable donation to a group that serves victims of sexual abuse and harassment. The other was dismissed after being sent to arbitration, and its outcome is unclear.
He also notes in the lawsuit that he remains the subject of at least one investigation by the State Bar of California, the public agency that licenses and regulates attorneys.
Gomez dismissed the State Bar investigation as contrived and accused other personal-injury lawyers of seeking to damage his law practice by submitting false claims against him and his firm.
“The filing of a State Bar complaint is ordinarily a private matter,” a footnote in the lawsuit says. “In this case, however, those conspiring to harm Gomez and GTA flouted the fact that they had made complaints and conveyed their inside knowledge of that practice.”
The lawsuit also denies a rape allegation from a woman Gomez says he had an affair with a decade or more ago. Since then, the complaint said, she and her husband have worked to discredit Gomez by spreading false accusations to damage his reputation.
No police reports or criminal charges were filed as a result of the rape assertion.
In one of multiple exhibits attached to the complaint, Gomez included results of a polygraph test that he says affirm he was telling the truth when denying he ever sexually assaulted the woman.
“This supports the conclusion that there is No Deception Indicated by the physiological reactions to the test stimulus questions,” the confidential report said.
Polygraph test results generally are not admissible in court proceedings in California because their results are not consistently reliable.
Gomez and his law firm have won a number of high-dollar verdicts over the years, including a $106 million wrongful-death award against San Diego County in the so-called “American Beauty” murder case two decades ago — a case involving a county medical examiner convicted of poisoning her husband and leaving rose petals surrounding his body.
The damage award was subsequently reduced to $14.5 million.
Gomez also secured a $10 million settlement from Toyota after one of the automaker’s vehicles was involved in a crash that killed four people.
The lawsuit against Consumer Attorneys of San Diego seeks unspecified damages, legal costs, attorneys fees and other relief deemed by the court.
The case has been assigned to Judge Matthew Braner. A case management conference is tentatively scheduled for June 7, 2024.
