Law Offices of Vincent W Davis & Associates Vincent Davis Vincent W Davis Vincent Davis Law Law Offices Of Vincent W Davis & Associates kept unearned retainer, committed possible ethics violations arcadia California

We had an exceedingly negative experience with the Law Offices Of Vincent W Davis & Associates.

My wife & I are former foster/adoptive parents. Last year, DCFS placed a very dangerous & mentally disturbed 13-year-old foster girl in our home with a false backstory. DCFS was aware that she was violent, psychotic & sexually aggressive, but lied in order to get the girl placed. Because of this, we were put in a position where the child repeatedly sexually assaulted my wife, tortured our cats (paralyzing one cat & injuring another), physically assaulted & VERY nearly murdered both of us, until she was finally removed via ambulance & taken to a psychiatric hospital after claiming to be possessed by demons she saw in a mirror. 

It was like something out of a horror movie & has been called by professionals, "the worst foster care case ever recorded".

After she was removed, we filed a police report for sexual battery & assault. The day after the LAPD detective spoke to her, our foster daughter retaliated by filing an allegation against us, but community care licensing would not give us details.

We retained the Law Offices of Vincent W Davis & Associates for $3600 to file a lawsuit against DCFS & paid a second retainer of $6000 to learn what the allegation was & defend us.

Attorney Stephanie Davis of the Law Offices of Vincent W Davis & Associates was assigned to our case. We wrote up a 70-page long retelling of the abuse we suffered at the h&s of our foster daughter & DCFS, along with supporting documents, including demonic drawings & emails to social workers begging for emergency mental health services.
Attorney Stephanie Davis ignored us & refused to respond to any attempts at communication for an entire month. 

After mentioning the breach of fiduciary duty to the receptionist at the Law Offices of Vincent W Davis & Associates, attorney Stephanie Davis finally called & admitted she thought my emails 'might have had a virus' so she never opened them.

After two months of almost no communication between the Law Offices of Vincent W Davis & Associates & community care licensing, the case was referred to LAPD, who then called us. Attorney Vincent W Davis instructed us to have the officer contact him directly.

On May 29th, the Law Offices of Vincent W Davis & Associates called us & attorney Vincent Davis asked if he was representing us in the "criminal case". We were shocked & his behavior was strangely guarded & 'cryptic'. We initially said 'yes' (assuming that they would first exhaust the retainers we'd paid), but then he demanded a third $7500 retainer. 

Attorney Vincent Davis is aware that we both suffer from severe PTSD & anxiety from our ordeal. Calling us at night with a tone that we interpreted as 'panicked' felt like a ploy to scare us into giving him more money. He claimed to have spoken to the police detective, however we later learned from the detective that this was not true & that she never once spoke to anyone from the Law Offices of Vincent W Davis & Associates.

We requested that the other two retainers be exhausted before paying him a third retainer & attorney Vincent Davis refused, threatening to tell the detective that we were unrepresented unless we gave him another $7,500. 

We became suspicious that our retainers were being kept while no work was being done. I sent the Law Offices of Vincent W Davis & Associates a concerned, yet polite email requesting a copy of our file to obtain a second opinion from another firm.

Attorney Vincent Davis responded rudely & cancelled our contract in the middle of an active case. Attorney Vincent Davis CC'ed his entire staff at the Law Offices of Vincent W Davis & Associates to stop all work on our cases & they then ignored all attempts at communication from May 30th until around a week later. Meanwhile, I filed a dispute on both retainer charges with my credit card company.

We never received our file or an itemized bill & have reported attorney Vincent W Davis & attorney Stephanie Davis to the California State Bar for ethics violations. We have also submitted for reimbursement of the stolen retainers from the state bar's client fund.

It took our new attorney less than a week to learn what the allegation was & take big steps towards resolving it. It was so... 'goofy' and obviously untrue that nobody initially wanted to tell us what it was. The detective was angry & frustrated that attorney Vincent Davis never returned her repeated calls for such a minor case.

The takeaway is to look at reviews before hiring an attorney. Ignore individual 'rants' & look for patterns. There are other reviews in which the Law Offices of Vincent W Davis & Associates are accused of keeping unearned retainers. 

Always pay retainers with credit cards, as it allows you to dispute the charge & adds an extra layer of security.

I issue a word of caution to future clientele that our experience with the Law Offices of Vincent W Davis & Associates was incredibly negative.