Kerry Steigerwalt's Broke Law Firm Trying to Make Deals

On March 24, San Diegan Laura Perry received a letter from Kerry Steigerwalt’s Pacific Law Center, once San Diego’s best known, most notorious, and most aggressively advertised law firm. Perry, 73, had paid $2000 to the firm to handle a Chapter 7 bankruptcy for her. She had received no service — one of thousands who allegedly paid money up front but got little or no legal help.

The Steigerwalt law firm, which went out of business last year, offered her a refund amount of $252, to be paid in installments. “The agreed amount will be paid, but [the firm] is financially unable to pay it ‘today,’” lamented the letter, which included a check for $42 signed by Steigerwalt. Perry’s attorney Gary Sehnert, who successfully handled her bankruptcy after Steigerwalt’s lawyers failed to act, advised her not to cash the check. “Once you do that, then they can argue that you agreed to the settlement,” says Sehnert, who did not charge her for any of his work.

On April 18, Perry got a second letter, fretting that the law firm’s “financial condition has worsened.” She would not get the promised April check. She also got a solicitation phone call from one Joe Rivera, representing the law firm, who wanted her to take a lowball settlement of $105. “I said that is a rip-off,” says Perry. “Every time I think of [this] it makes my blood pressure rise.” Rivera would not reply to my questions.

Pacific Law Center was founded by Larry Majors, a nonlawyer convicted felon who vamoosed from Texas after a judge called a law firm he operated “a borderline criminal enterprise,” according to a 2009 San Diego lawsuit, since dismissed. After getting into trouble running several law firms, Majors set up Pacific Law Center in 1993 with his son Austin Majors, also a nonlawyer, as executive director, according to the lawsuit. Steigerwalt, who had been with the public defender’s office for 6 years and in private practice for 18 years, took over the firm in 2008 and attached his name to the front. The firm specialized in drunk driving, personal injury, defective product, loan modification, and bankruptcy cases. Taking over the Pacific Law Center “was the worst decision of my life,” says Steigerwalt, who once again has his own firm. “It cost me millions.”

That April 18 letter to Laura Perry stated, “Vendors and creditors of [the defunct legal institution] claim the firm owes them more than $3 million.”

The sum could be larger than that. Steigerwalt hired the Chicago law office of J. Kevin Benjamin, who set up a Mission Valley office. Steigerwalt pays Benjamin $250 to take over each client who has not been provided service. Benjamin explains to the people that he is not replacing the shuttered law firm. He will take the case himself for a very low fee of, say, $395 for a Chapter 7.

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