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Vexatious Litigant - example

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Woman who sues at drop of hat may get hers

Ken Garcia    Tuesday, June 6, 2000
©2000 San Francisco Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO -- The legal establishment may never completely catch up with Patricia A. McColm, but the karmic circle is closing in fast.

Because if time truly wounds all heels, McColm's number is just a few ticks away from coming up. And her departure from her abode near City College will mark a day of celebration for her neighbors and a large portion of the local court system, where Ms. McColm has made herself into a local, if unwanted, legend.

For those who haven't had the pleasure of being introduced to McColm, let me do the honors. She is the city's most infamous vexatious litigant -- a person who has sued so many people and agencies and businesses so many times that the courts ruled she could not bring another frivolous lawsuit without permission.

It didn't stop sweet Patty from trying, mind you -- she did manage to sue one neighbor for ``civil conspiracy'' recently and got a temporary restraining order against another prohibiting him from opening and shutting a side door. But now she's running from the law as much as she's pursuing it, and it's tough even for the Road Runner to speed in two directions at the same time.

Some of her neighbors were all but set to throw a block party when they found out that on Friday, the mortgage company that holds the note on her house was scheduled to have a foreclosure sale. It seems that the Witch of Westwood Park had not made any mortgage payments for nearly two years and was in arrears to the tune of $90,000.

Somehow, Patty managed to stave off the foreclosure sale another few weeks by filing another Chapter 11 brief, and sure enough, on Sunday, there was her house of horrors on Miramar Avenue advertised in the paper for $875,000, the scariest part being the line about ``for sale by owner.''

Having the uninitiated show up at McColm's door is kind of like walking in on Tony Perkins at the Bates Motel. You might survive the encounter, but it will haunt you for the rest of your life.

``I went out there just thinking it was a routine claim, when I encountered the most abusive, profane person I've ever met in my life,'' said insurance investigator Vic Pence, who handled a claim filed by McColm for water damage due to a leaky roof. ``Most people don't realize until it's too late that if you have the smallest dealing with her that you end up in the battle of your life.''

Mysteriously, just a few months after she had a new roof put on, someone managed to climb onto McColm's roof and drill and saw enough holes in it to let the water pour in. McColm naturally blamed her conspiratorial neighbors. Pence said the insurance company has ruled out that theory and has strong suspicions about how the holes got there, but the claim is still pending.

Still pending might be a good way to describe many of the legal adventures in McColm's past, but at least a few have been resolved. And you could bet the house, hers or yours, that more will follow.

In the past two decades, McColm has sued the federal government, the Bank of America, Kaiser, at least three department stores, a host of city workers, numerous private businesses, tenants, and at least two newspapers that printed articles about her. And when I called her yesterday to talk to her about the foreclosure sale and other matters, she told me she will sue me as well.

Like I say, she's consistent.

After she was denied tenure at San Francisco State University, she filed suit contending sex discrimination. When she failed the state bar the second time, she sued the state bar.

She has sued contractors. She has sued churches. She has sued people for unseen injuries she claimed to have incurred in at least nine car accidents. And she has sued her neighbors so many times that they could form their own support group, if they weren't so busy scrambling to retain legal counsel.

One poor neighbor, 27-year-old David Greenbaum, has been hounded by McColm for almost two decades, since she first filed a lawsuit to stop him and his brothers from playing basketball in their backyard. That suit lingered in the courts for eight years, and ended with McColm getting a nice little settlement of $5,000 from an insurance company. She recently filed a fresh ``civil conspiracy'' suit against him.

The last time I saw McColm she was in court fighting charges by the city that she ripped off renters at her house by demanding outrageous cash advances and then keeping the money after she terrorized them and all but forced them to leave. On more than one occasion, her tenants required police protection when they moved out.

She was finally forced to stop renting out rooms, but there's just no stopping McColm. If there is a loophole she will find it, if there's an angle, she will play it, and if there's a target, she will sue it.

That will help explain how McColm has managed to stay in her home despite having made no payments on it in almost two years, and how at the last minute, she managed to stave off the foreclosure sale and obviously hopes to sell her house in the interim and walk away with a tidy chunk of change.

There are a number of liens on her property due to claims filed by numerous contractors who say they worked on her house with a 10 percent deposit and are still waiting for the other 90 percent. The poor saps never knew anything about McColm until it was too late, but if they have any hope of ever seeing another penny, then their faith knows no bounds.

Just ask Mark Balisteri, who had the misfortune of moving into the property next to McColm's in October. Because of McColm's history, real estate agents were required to prepare packets of newspaper clippings and other information disclosing her history of legal abuse against her neighbors. Balisteri said he read it all -- and yet still believed he could just avoid her.

``You could read all that information and still not realize how unreasonable that woman is,'' he said. ``I thought, my wife and I don't have any kids, our dog doesn't bark, we could just never deal with her. We didn't think it could possibly be that bad.''

Think again. When he filed a permit to do some minor work on his house, McColm appealed it. Tied it up for months. Then she filed a harassment lawsuit against him claiming that he was slamming his side door to bother her. A judge, weary of her presence in his courtroom, granted a temporary restraining order barring the use of the door during certain hours, though it was later dismissed.

A lawyer for the mortgage company said McColm's attempts to stop the foreclosure sale are fairly routine and that she was ``entitled to her day in court.'' We had a good laugh over that one.

But Patty isn't laughing and her neighbors aren't celebrating. Not yet. Not when a lawsuit is just a phone call, or a ball bounce, or a church bell ring away.

For you can sue to stop church bells from ringing. But halting time is another matter -- and not one that can be settled by the courts.

You can reach Ken Garcia at (415) 777-7152, fax him at (415) 896-1107, or send him an e-mail note at garciak@sfgate.com.

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