Sometimes common sense gets kicked out of Orange County courtrooms.
That was the case in Bradford Kuish v. William W. Smith. In December 2005, Kuish offered $14 million for Smith's Laguna Beach estate and made a substantial deposit. Smith found another buyer willing to pay $15 million for the beachfront property, but refused to refund Kuish's $600,000 deposit. Smith claimed he considered the money “non-refundable.”
Following a bench trial, Superior Court Judge David T. McEachen sided with Smith. This month, however, the California Court of Appeal in Santa Ana overruled McEachen and noted that the terms of the deposit never mentioned a non-refundable status. The justices ordered McEachen “to issue a new opinion consistent” with their decision.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.