Nearly $2M Defamation Award (Including Attorney Fees) Upheld
From Creal v. Nasiri, decided Thursday by California Court of Appeal Justice Victor Viramontes, joined by Justices Maria Stratton and Elizabeth Grimes:
Creal is a certified public accountant (CPA). He has been a practicing CPA since 1978 and operates an accountancy firm in Torrance under the name Creal & Creal, An Accountancy Corporation. Creal’s business consists primarily of preparing individual tax returns, business tax returns, and litigation support….
Creal maintained a website for his firm for 20 years but did not generally advertise as most of his new clients were referrals from existing clients. While Creal’s firm had a webpage on Yelp, Creal did not create the page but merely confirmed with Yelp that the firm was his. He could not delete the Yelp page or modify any of the Yelp reviews. Creal believed newly referred clients would check Yelp for reviews….
In June 2015, Creal was retained as an expert by Nasiri’s ex-husband, Mohamadali Abolahrar, in the dissolution case between Abolahrar and Nasiri. Although originally retained as an expert, Creal also filed an amended tax return for Abolahrar after learning there was an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax credit for $65,000 for 2013. To claim the tax credit, Creal filed a married-filing-separately return for Abolahrar in March 2017, claiming half the credit for Abolahrar, believing the tax credit was a community property interest. Despite only claiming half the credit, the IRS refunded the entire amount to Abolahrar.
On October 26, 2017, Abolahrar’s family law attorney asked Creal to pick up Abolahrar’s laptop from Nasiri’s family law attorney, Nadine Jett. Creal went to Jett’s office and informed the receptionist that he was there for the laptop. While he waited in the reception area, Nasiri walked in and spoke to the receptionist. Creal did not interact with Nasiri in the office, and left once he rece
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