Noted attorney and anti-cult activist Ford Green of San Anselmo, California has been nominated for a Trial Lawyers for Public Justice Foundation’s Lawyer of the Year award. The award is “given to the lawyer or lawyers who make the greatest contribution to the public interest by trying or settling a precedent-setting case,” reports the Alameda Times-Star.
Winners will be announced July 22nd at the foundation’s 21st annual awards dinner in San Francisco.
Green was nominated along with three other California attorneys for his work regarding a 22-year legal battle to collect a multi-million dollar personal injury judgement awarded to Lawrence Wollersheim against the Church of Scientology.
This is certainly not the first precedent-setting case for Green.
The prominent lawyer litigated and won the landmark appellate court decision, Molko v. Holy Spirit Association (1988) 46 Cal.3d 1092.
In this decision the California Supreme Court held that the First Amendment does not bar civil causes of action for fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress and restitution when a cult uses deception, which subsequently leads to an unsuspecting individual’s exposure to thought reform techniques that cause suffering and damages.
In 1998 Greene also won a $1.6 million jury verdict in Bertolucci v. Ananda against The Church of Self Realization led by Swami Kiyananda in California for fraud, coercion and sexual exploitation.
Ford Green is an Advisory Board member of The Ross Institute.
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