A. Russell Martin, who also goes by Russ Martin, Russell Martin, and Andrew Russell Martin, is the worst attorney I have ever had the misfortune to hire. He is not just bad at his job, he is a liar and he cheated me out of more than $8,000. He used to work for Brayton Purcell in Novato, CA. I'm not sure where he is now.

I hired him for a medical malpractice case against a doctor who operated on more than a dozen of the wrong parts of my body. The first lawyer in the case missed the deadline for disclosing expert witnesses. Mr. Martin had the chance to request a new deadline when the trial was delayed for 3 months. But he told me that we didn't need an expert witness. This was a fatal mistake, and I eventually lost.

But what he eventually did was much worse than that. All I discussed with him was having a jury trial, and I paid the deposit for the jury fees. But a few days before the trial, he met with the judge and the opposing lawyer, and he agreed to waive my right to a jury trial behind my back. He tried to get me not to show up on the first day of trial, but I told him I wanted to be there to pick the jury. So the trial started with just a judge, no jury, and I called him aside and asked him what the hell was going on? He told me that for the first part of this bifurcated trial that I didn't have the choice of a jury. I just thought he had screwed up again.

But it wasn't until the judge ruled against me and I got a copy of his ruling that I saw it said that I had "freely and intelligently waived my right to a jury trial". I had done no such thing. I called Martin, and he claimed he didn't know why it was worded that way, that the fact was I didn't have a choice of a jury for the first part of the trial. I asked him to put this in writing, but he refused. I then knew he was lying to me. I later had my boss present when I called him again, and my boss heard Martin on speaker phone again say that I didn't have the choice of a jury trial. I wrote to the judge telling him of Martin's deception, but the judge made his final ruling against me. (I found out later that the judge probably knows the doctor, and I am filing a complaint against him with the Judicial Council. His ruling totally ignored the evidence which was all on my side, unrefuted by the doctor, and the judge ignored the fact that Martin deceived me).

When Martin got a copy of my letter to the judge, he finally decided to put his statement in writing, but it was the opposite of what he told me and that my boss overheard. Now he said , don't you remember that we sat down and you decided to waive your right to a jury trial?

This man essentially stole more than $8,000 from me, blowing the trial because he didn't want to have to pay the jury fees, which would have been almost $700 per day. He could get it all over with quickly, in 3 days instead of the expected 8 days, and then he could just keep the money I had paid him. This is also why he didn't get an expert witness, and he didn't even take any depostions, not even the doctor's! Before I paid him, I told him that if he didn't think he could win the case that I could better use this money for the surgery I needed to try to fix the damage the doctor did to my knees when he operated on them without my consent. But Martin said he thought I had a good case and that he had a decent chance of winning.

Russell Martin knew how I had suffered for years because of what that doctor did to me, and instead of helping me, he ripped me off. This is my definition of evil.