LA Lawyer Who Tried to Hack Judge Should Lose License, Bar Rules

A California judge said a lawyer should be disbarred for helping cover up a scandal involving the country’s largest utility, and later trying to hack the personal messages of a judge and lawyer involved in the case.

Attorney Michael Jacob Libman, while pretending to represent customers, filed a collusive lawsuit against the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power that was drafted by the city’s own lawyers, and reaped $1.65 million in attorneys fees for work that he didn’t do, a California State Bar Court judge found.

After the collusion was discovered, Libman courted Israeli intelligence group Black Cube in an attempt to hack into the emails of Judge Elihu M. Berle, who oversaw the LADWP case, and lawyer Brian Kabateck, who was appointed to replace Libman in representing the class of customers suing LADWP.

“Libman’s misconduct is substantially aggravated by multiple acts of wrongdoing spanning several years, significant harm to Kabateck through deliberate intimidation requiring security measures and restraining orders, as well as to the administration of justice,” California State Bar Court Judge Yvette D. Roland wrote Tuesday, finding Michael Jacob Libman guilty of nine charges of attorney misconduct.

Libman is one of several lawyers who worked together to try to minimize the city’s losses after the failed implementation of an LADWP utility billing system that massively overcharged some customers. The attempted cover-up by L.A. officials and lawyers has been called a “fraud on the court.”

Libman coordinated with fellow lawyer Paul Paradis starting in 2020 to hire the hackers, Roland said. Libman’s justification was that he suspected Berle and Kabateck were acting corruptly and didn’t trust the US Attorney’s Office to investigate.

Paradis, who pleaded guilty in 2022 to charges that he accepted $2.2 million to arrange the collusive lawsuit, was working as an FBI informant at the time.

Kabateck said Libman went to his house and threatened him, and he and his family feared for their safety.

"[Libman’s] explicitly malicious intent was evident in statements like '[w]e’re gonna castrate them both’ and his rationalization that ‘sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette,’ revealing a retaliatory motivation that far exceeded legitimate investigative purposes,” Roland wrote.

Libman also lied about working with law firm Kingsley & Kingsley on 32 cases to boost his credentials in his application for attorneys fees, the court said.

The lawyer tried to get the State Bar Court case tossed on the grounds that he wasn’t given the option of a jury or a non-agency judge. But the right to a civil jury trial only applies to federal cases, the State Bar judge found.

The recommendation will now go to the California Supreme Court, unless Libman appeals for review.

The case is In the Matter of Michael Jacob Libman, Cal. State Bar, No. SBC-24-O-30284, 1/28/25.