Earlier today, I filed a complaint against California attorney Raj Matani.
Matani sent me a cease and desist letter on April 26, 2022.
Matani’s letter followed my first article on Bryan Mineo and his swimming related non-profit, One With the Ocean (OWO).
Here’s part of the letter.
I declined his offer a couple hours later. Here is my email.
As you know, your client and his swimming prowess have been featured in several publications. As such, he is considered a limited purpose public figure for the purposes of any potential lawsuit which means he would need to prove defamation by actual malice, a near impossible standard. Furthermore, California passed anti-SLAPP legislation for exactly these kinds of situations, and California's anti-SLAPP statute is among the toughest in the nation. It provides a quick path to dismissal and I can then collect legal fees from you and your client. It even provides a SLAPP Back provision which may also be an option.
I have however added your dispute of the salary to the end of the article. That is all I will change unless you'd like me to reprint the entire letter.
Matani left me a voicemail that day as well, and his client, Bryan Mineo left me a voicemail a couple hours after I sent my email rejecting their offer.
The next day, I continued communication with Mr. Matani. I told him it was inappropriate for both he and his client to contact me. I also told him that since I rejected his offer, he needed to file a lawsuit or go away. I offered a third option: for him and/or his client to come on my podcast to discuss the differences we have regarding OWO. Mr. Matani initially seemed to accept, however, he asked for a list of “preliminary questions.”
After I told him none were forthcoming, he cut off contact, and I haven’t heard from him since.
When it became clear he was not filing a lawsuit- I even wrote an article entitled, “Did Mineo Bluff”- I started to wonder if Raj had committed an ethical violation.
It doesn’t seem ethical to send a cease and desist letter when you have no intention of suing, but is it a violation of the California BAR Association code of professional conduct?
That code can be found here.
That code, like much of the law, is often vague. For instance, one violation of the code is, “In the course of representing a client a lawyer shall not knowingly fail to disclose a material fact to a third person* when disclosure is necessary to avoid assisting a criminal or fraudulent* act by a client, unless disclosure is prohibited by Business and Professions Code section 6068, subdivision (e)(1) or rule 1.6.”
Another part of the code states, “it is professional misconduct for a lawyer to engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud,* deceit, or reckless or intentional misrepresentation."
I believe Mr. Matani violated this part of the code when he sent me a cease and desist letter when he had no intention of suing me.
What does the California BAR think?
For now, they are unhelpful. Their automatic system states that the BAR does not give legal advice or analysis.
I will need to file a complaint to find out, so I did.
The complaint is below.
…
I am a journalist. Mr. Matani sent me a cease and desist letter on April 26, 2022. He claimed that I had defamed his client, Bryan Mineo. Along with the letter, he left me a voicemail the same day. The cease and desist letter clearly stated that I must remove information or be sued. I refused so later that day his client, Mr. Mineo, called me and left me a voicemail: making three contacts in one day. Mr. Mineo was now offering to have a group conference by Zoom, or something similar later that same week. I sent an email back to Mr. Matani telling him that since he is counsel Mr. Mineo should not also call me. I told Mr. Matani that his letter was explicit. Remove said items or be sued. I told him to sue me or go away. I offered a third option. I told Mr. Matani that he and/or his client could come on my podcast and discuss the dispute. Mr. Matani, having threatened to sue me only a day earlier, seemed to agree, stating in an email "As I stated before, my client and his organization are the good guys who do real and actual work in the community. Actual journalism would have required you to take time to interview sources other than those submitted by your financiers before publishing your article.
"Nevertheless, my client and I are happy to set the record straight.
"Please provide a preliminary list of questions you would like my client to answer as well as dates and times you are available for the interview."
When I informed him there would be no preliminary questions, he stopped all contact. I don't believe that Mr. Matani had a good faith belief that I violated any defamation laws when he sent me that cease and desist letter. First, he's a divorce lawyer. Second, he backed down immediately and has not had any communication since. I looked up the California Bar rules of professional conduct has and one of them states, "It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud,* deceit, or reckless or intentional misrepresentation." Mr. Matani never had a good faith belief that I defamed his client. He never intended to sue, even though in his letter, he states explicitly, "We are requesting that you cease and desist from further publication about Mr. Mineo or One With the Ocean.We request that you immediately print a retraction and remove the article from your SubStack, Twitter, Linkedin and other social media by April 27, 2022 at 5PM. Should you fail to do so, Mr. Mineo will seek all available legal remedies including but not limited to suing you for defamation."
In reality, Mr. Mineo- his client- had no available legal remedies. To make matters worse, Mr. Matani claimed that violated some unspecified law by using a deposition in my article, when he left me a voicemail. I put that voicemail into a follow up article,
Again, I have had no contact with Mr. Matani since.
So, in conclusion, by sending that letter, along with calling me, Mr. Matani materially misrepresented his intentions, his understanding of a possible defamation case against me, and this was nothing more than an unethical attempt to bully me into removing the article in question and to stop me from further investigation of his client.
Post Script
This continues my series on nefarious non-profits. Find the previous articles in the series: Article 1, Article 2, Article 3, Article 4, and Article 5.
Check out the new fundraiser to help investigate more non-profits which don’t receive enough scrutiny.