Court releases Foley from lawsuit

An Orange County Superior Court judge this week dismissed local employment attorney Katrina Foley from a lawsuit accusing her of maliciously suing a company without proper evidence.

Foley, a school board trustee who is running for City Council in November, represented a client named Terry Parsons, who sued the investment firm Monex Deposit Co. in 2009, alleging that he was fired because he had a disabling heart condition.

Monex prevailed and in 2013 sued Foley and Parsons for damages, including the cost of its legal defense.

Monex’s lawyers accused Foley of pursuing the disability claim even though Parsons had allegedly admitted he wasn’t fired for a disability.

The company alleged Foley and Parsons demanded unreasonable settlements and forced Monex to produce tens of thousands of pages of documents in its defense.

In her ruling Tuesday, Judge Sheila Fell removed Foley from Monex’s suit.

Foley has a 1st Amendment right to petition the court, and Monex was not able to produce evidence that she participated in the lawsuit with any malicious intent, Fell wrote.

“Plaintiff has not shown a likelihood of prevailing on the merits of its malicious prosecution claim because it has not submitted evidence of malice beyond the absence of probable cause,” Fell wrote.

Foley had asked to be dismissed from the suit and called Fell’s decision a vindication.

“They have no evidence of malice because there is none,” she said.