Superior Court Judge Throws Disgraced Attorney Graham Berry Back Onto “Vexatious Litigant” List—for Good

In the 1990s, shyster lawyer Graham Berry was sanctioned over $100,000 by numerous California courts for his vile and dishonest abuse of the justice system.

His sordid history, available in the public record, included paying witnesses for manufactured evidence, falsifying evidence, using wrongful litigation tactics and defying court orders.

Further, Berry was consistently filing meritless lawsuits to harass and harm the Church of Scientology, its principals and members.

By 1998, so egregious were his continuing violations that the Court declared Berry a vexatious litigant and he was added to the California Judicial Council’s Vexatious Litigant List. L.A. Superior Court Judge Alexander H. Williams III issued a scathing rebuke of Berry in his ruling approving the motion to designate Berry as a vexatious litigant:

“[Q]uite frankly this Court has seen the dumping of huge amounts of borderline irrelevant material with undue glee by Mr. Berry because it is in his judgment and my observation a license to bash and trash. I have seen it. I have watched it and it’s time for somebody to call it what it is and that is what it is.”

“With all the due respect, Sir, I have to sadly state that if there is such a thing on God’s green earth as a vexatious litigant you, Sir, sadly, are it.”

A “vexatious litigant” is someone who persistently, and without sufficient grounds, initiates or maintains legal actions with the intent to harass, delay or abuse the court system rather than to seek a just resolution. Berry’s numerous violations got him banned from filing actions on his own behalf, without first getting court approval to prove it was not a vexatious lawsuit.

That should have been the end of the matter with Berry ensconced on the list.

But Berry had other plans.

In October 2023, 25 years after his original relegation to the “V.L.” list, Berry launched an unscrupulous scheme to get off the list.

First, he applied “ex parte” (meaning representing the interests of one side only) to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge—the presiding judge in a case Berry was part of—for an order removing him from the V.L. list. Per the law, however, Berry is legally obligated to inform the victims or parties from the original case that he was filing such a request.

But Berry intentionally did no such thing.

Instead, he changed the caption of the case to make it look like it concerned only Berry himself, calling it “In Re Graham E.Berry.” He thus persuaded the presiding judge to grant an application to remove him from the list of vexatious litigants without notifying his victims and intentionally kept the whole matter under wraps. So no opposition was presented.

Berry thought the matter was closed and he had won. Not so.

His deception was discovered some time after the ruling itself was issued, and a group of Berry’s victims filed a motion to revoke the order removing him from the V.L. list.

The current L.A. Superior Court presiding judge (a different judge entirely) heard the motion, reviewed the long list of deceptions and lies Berry had presented to the first judge to get the ruling overturned, and the hammer came down. Berry had lost and a new ruling was issued.

With that, Graham Berry was returned to the list.

Now that Berry is back on the Judicial Council’s list of vexatious litigants, he is again prohibited from filing pro per litigation without first obtaining permission of the presiding judge of the court where the proposed litigation is to be filed.

But more to the point, he has been reconfirmed as an unethical and immoral litigant, a vexatious litigant, not trusted to respect and uphold the justice system.