NOONAN

v. #BSC0085538

VALENCIA

To the Court and the Hon. Jon Rantzman:

Re: 300 hours of legal research @ expected rate of $10/hr: (Quantum meruit)

(See "Exhibit Bill," attached)

Robert Valencia and myself have been friends for approximately the past seventeen years, primarily as part of an informal group of men who've been playing "noontime" basketball at Harmon Gym (and now the Recreational Sports Facility) at the University of California, Berkeley. As well, prior to last summer (1996), I've been doing legal work for Mr. Valencia in the form of doing legal research at Boalt Hall Law Library, filing briefs and documents and serving process. Prior to last summer, this work took the form of an act of friendship in which I did not expect any compensation.

However, due to the closure for construction work at Boalt Hall Law Library last summer and into the fall, as well as due to Mr. Valencia receiving half-a-dozen appellate briefs from the California Appellate Project (appointed counsel on review for criminal cases in the State of California), the nature of this relationship explicitly changed. As Mr. Valencia estimated the income he would receive from the timely performance of this assigned work to be $40,000, we entered into a verbal agreement for myself to be paid for the reasonable value of my services as a legal researcher--upon completion of the work and with the additional factor, acceptable to myself, that I would be paid after Mr. Valencia and his girlfriend, Debbie Duthrie (Alameda County Mental Health Association), made the necessary down payments on a house being purchased in the Lake Shore/Trestle Glen area of Oakland. As trust had never been an issue in my friendship with Mr. Valencia--to the best of my information and belief--I saw no need for anything beyond a "word of honor" covenant; in fact, Mr. Valencia had asked to borrow the approximately $1,000 I was expecting to receive at that time from proceeds of a land sale in New York State--to which I'd agreed, as during one of our conversations we both enjoyed after the work day, he'd told me how his mother, sister, aunt and brother were all "punking" him by refusing to lend him any money (the women all part of the Internal Revenue Service's "fink division," his mother having been a waitress and food service sector monitor before her retirement, the "color of law" factor being a contributing reason for the reticence, we felt). I was willing to do this matter despite a disturbing incident in April of 1994, when, just prior to a vacation I was to take in Hawaii, $500 cash disappeared out of my pants pocket in his locked office, 2161 Shattuck, #301-302, while he and I were at the Rec. Sports Facility playing basketball (As I'd given Mr. Valencia $100 for his assistance in getting my will trust fund check from my Uncle James Hunter McNenny, Columbus, Ohio, cashed, I attributed the matter to "other" factors, including the fact that he has an office partner, Pete Tyler, and matters being handled in a federal "claim for relief" by my attorney, Mr. Patrick Hallinan, Law Offices, "Hallinan and Boro," 703 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103). Nonetheless, upon completion of our implied contract as his "Law Clerk," at that point approximately 300 hours of work, having had the additional work of three more appellate project briefs and the filing of these briefs and legal documents in a timely manner, in person, at Federal and State court clerk offices in San Francisco, San Mateo and Oakland, late in the Fall of 1996 I was faced with the $40 dues obligation of my "Long-term Alumni" membership at the Rec. Sports Facility--as I'd put aside other work I contract to focus completely on getting these briefs timely completed. Mr. Valencia agreed to cover my dues, promising a gift certificate from his girlfriend after the weekend that would cover three months--claiming poverty and that the check he wrote to cover his own dues (which he asked me to pay on my way to campus, which I did) was most likely going to bounce. That Monday he made an excuse about his girlfriend not being able to find it, which I accepted, then, upon going into his adjoining office to make some calls to the Southern California court clerks for him, I noticed on his desk a credit card receipt, signed by him, for a (just prior) Sunday "champagne brunch" in Jack London Square--in excess of $60, the tip alone being $20.

Shortly thereafter I verbally made the first of several requests to be paid--at which point he again pleaded poverty and counseled me to be patient. At my next request he informed me that he "didn't owe [me] a thing," and proceeded to outline some Machiavellian scenario where he claimed that I didn't like "his first offer," so the next ones "were only going to be worse." When I asked what he meant by said statement, he claimed we'd had a conversation in which he'd offered me $10 an hour and I'd supposedly "exploded in a fit of rage at how inadequate that amount was and stormed out of the office." I not only explained to him that the matter "never happened" but too reminded him of how many excellent cites I'd found, for which he'd received compliments on the quality of his briefs (that I'd proofread and suggested editorial changes bringing out the legal arguments more clearly), plus, how the timeliness of completion had been very important (one day when I'd not been available he having used a friend of ours to perform filing and service of a brief, paying him $25 in advance to ensure completion). So, I then told him that I felt $10 an hour would indeed be the "reasonable value" of my services.

PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that in 1990-1992, I spent all my spare time at the Boalt Hall Law Library researching my own federal "claim for relief," writing and filing all my own pleadings--at that time with no other assistance--including complex arguments involving Intellectual Property ownership, moral and performance rights, as well as other Right to Contract, Fair Housing and Religious Freedom matters, becoming quite "efficient" in finding "the perfect case cite" and "extremely gifted and eloquent" in making argument, according to my attorney now handling the case, Mr. Patrick Hallinan--(415)-536-4111, and his brother, Terence, currently the San Francisco District Attorney. (Additionally, see "Exhibit Resume," attached.)

At that point Mr. Valencia informed me that "the case is closed" and that if I continued to argue he'd get his" legal partner," Eugene Wong (immigration law, San Francisco) to withdraw his wife's business offer of weekend janitorial work, which I'd accepted to do. He made good on this" threat," just as he'd scotched a previous work situation in which Gene's wife, Connie, had wished to hire me to tutor her. Mr. Valencia, altering the mode of our numerous friendly banters over beers in the evening about creative writing, legal arguments, women, sports and the usual "male ego" subject matters, "disinformationed" me to Mr. and Mrs. Wong as an "illiterate" with "AA-DD learning disabilities" who has to be "told exactly what to do all the time or he screws up; he can't even count change from the store properly."

As, despite the blustering nature of his "methinks he doth protest too much" style of defense--a matter that never really bothered me, just managed to prematurely end some conversations--he was always wrong in his counter-assertions (even about arcane matters of Latin grammar, a subject on which I'd had four years of High School language with a very good teacher in upstate New York), I did not expect the damage that has resulted to myself, my reputation, my professional writing career, and, strangely enough, my Rights of Association--with females, especially my business agent, Mrs. Maxine Hong Kingston. Said matter was done deliberately to insult and cause pain and suffering, plaintiff feels, given both my knowledge and expertise in Asian Buddhist matters and too my defending of the female's point of view in legal and social discussions.

What, to my best information and belief, has happened, is that his IRS "family," in which he maintains active ties, persuaded him to "teach me a lesson of respect" by claiming that not only does he not have to pay me—ala a Burmese Buddhist monk being "re-educated" as a "porter" doing hard labor—but too that mine own 110 pages-plus of original poetry written and revised over the past twenty years--primarily from my "life story"--somehow were written by him and that I stole the chapbooks from his office while thieving other items from him. As I've--strenuously, incredulously--denied the matter in legal forums and when opportune; what has resulted instead of the usual legal procedures of Sixth Amendment Right of Confrontation (impeachment, etc.), is myself being further libeled and slandered as "crazy" by his aunt, mother and " therapist" sister--all of whom have "paper-jacketed' me with such people as Alameda County District Attorney "Jack Radisch." These matters have all contributed to a "situation" in which I cannot get the slightest bit of Due Process—as I apparently indeed have "no rights as a citizen left in this country."

--According to Black's Law Dictionary, "Quantum meruit as amount of recovery means 'as much as deserved,' and measures recovery under implied contract to pay compensation as reasonable value of services rendered. Kint v. Read, 28 Wash. App. 731, 626 P. 2d 52,55. An equitable doctrine, based on the concept that no one who benefits by the labor and materials of another should be enriched thereby; under those circumstances, the law implies a promise to pay a reasonable amount for the labor and materials furnished, even absent a specific contract therefor. Swiftships, Inc. v. Burdin, La. App. 338 So. 2d 1193, 1195. Essential elements of recovery under quantum meruit are: (1) valuable services were rendered or materials furnished, (2) for person sought to be charged, (3) which services and materials were accepted by person sought to be charged, used and enjoyed by him, and (4) under such circumstances as reasonably notified person sought to be charged that plaintiff, in performing such services, was expected to be paid by person sought to be charged. Montes v Naismith and Trevino Const. Co., Tex. Civ. App., 459 S.W. 2d 691, 694. See also Unjust enrichment doctrine.

The common count in an action of assumpsit for work and labor, founded on an implied assumpsit or promise on the part of the defendant to pay the plaintiff as much as he reasonably deserved to have for his labor. 3 Bl. Comm. 161. "

--"Although a mutual intention to contract is required, Johnson v. Nasi [309 P. 2d 380 (1957)]; McKevitt v. Golden Age Breweries, Inc., 14 Wash.2d 50, 126 P. 2d 1077 (1942), this intention may be deduced from the circumstances:

...although, if the recipient of services should, as a reasonable man, have understood that the performer expected compensation, the actual belief of the recipient as to such matter is immaterial,

Western Asphalt Co. v. Valle, 25 Wash. 2d 428, 438, 171 P. 2d 159 (1946); Jacobs v. Brock, 66 Wash. 2d 878, 406 P. 2d 17 (1965)."

Kintz v. Read, 626 P. 2d 52, 55 (1981)

--"Quantum meruit refers to that class of obligations imposed by law, without regard to the intention or assent of the parties bound, for reasons dictated be reason and justice. The form of the action is contract, but they are not contracts, because the parties do not fix the terms and their intentions are disregarded. On class of such cases is those where a party wrongfully compels another to render him valuable services, and a promise to pay is implied, because on equitable grounds one ought not to be permitted to deep that which is received without compensation."

Carpenter v. Josey Oil Co. 26 F. 2d 442, 443-4 (C.C.A. Eighth Cir.1928)

--"'Honour' and 'reputation' are more objective concepts, being analogous to the kind of personal interests which are protected by actions for defamation...Nonetheless, there are still problems in determining what is the scope of the expression 'honour or reputation.' This was raised by several delegates at the Brussels Conference [Revisions to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, 1886]...The consensus among the delegates was that the wider meaning was intended, and that, while this did not need clarification in the text of Article 6, it should be referred to in the report of the rapporteur general. This was done be Marcel Plaisant in the following passage in his report:

'The author will have the right to take proceedings against any action prejudicial to his honour and reputation and it generally emerged from the debate that the author should be protected as a writer just as much as in his capacity as a personality on the literary scene. This is why you have added that he may object to any other action, implying by this action likely to be prejudicial to the man, as a result of the distortion of his work.'"

Sam Ricketson, The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, 1886-1986, p. 471; Center for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary College (Eastern Press, London, 1987).

--"[T]here are three periods at which the world dies; the period of a plague, of a general war, and the dissolution of verbal contracts [, the most serious type being] the suspension of amity between a king and the country."

Senchus Mor (Ancient Laws of Ireland) (5 cols.)(Alexander Thorn, Dublin, 1865)