One of the more interesting real estate disputes that we have litigated pertained to a couple of properties where our client was brought in after the property was developed in order to cosign the guarantee for a multimillion dollar refinancing. He refused or was not interested in signing such a guarantee unless, of course, he became an owner of the property. So, one of the partners who wanted to obtain my client’s guarantee agreed to transfer that partner’s ownership interest to my client. My client received the ownership interest, he signed the guarantee and he thought the deal was done.

Little did he realize that his friend, former friend, and the former partner in the real estate venture had created a transfer back agreement whereby my client agreed to transfer back his interest to this partner. That, we alleged, was a forged document. The partner, of course, asserted that it was a legitimate signature and we had to try both of these cases to establish to a jury that what appeared to be my client’s signature on this transfer back agreement was not in fact, his signature. And, we did that successfully in both cases.

And, one of the ways in which we did it, aside from the standard handwriting expert saying that this isn’t his signature and their handwriting expert saying that it is, is that we looked to contemporaneous communications and documents that exist or didn’t exist. In other words, there were no e-mails at the time saying, “Oh, by the way, thank you for signing this transfer back agreement.” there were no contemporaneous e-mails or documents corroborating the existence of this agreement. And, we stressed to the jury that in the absence of those documents they should suspect the authenticity of this agreement. Because, there’s literally nothing else supporting it’s existence.