Our lawyer refuses to communicate with us

[Olifan]

We are in the Los Angeles area. We hired a lawyer to sue someone
who had ripped us off with an illegal franchising scheme. After a long
wait our lawyer determined that the judgement he was seeking was
too large for the court he was using and had the case switched to
Superior Court. There followed more months of delays which he
attributed to the court having misplaced some of the paperwork.
Eventually our lawyer told us we had won our case and it was just a
matter of waiting for the judge to award a default judgement. But nothing
ever happens.

In particular, on February 23rd our lawyer said he expected the judgement to be handed down by the middle or end of March. On May 9th he told me he expected it "fairly soon" and told me he would call the court that afternoon and let me know what he found out. He never called me back and I have not heard from him since. When I call him the receptionist says he is busy. If I leave voice messages or send emails he does not respond. How long am I supposed to put up with this before I complain to someone?

Since I am not a lawyer I am afraid to rock the boat. I keep expecting the judgement to be handed down in one more week. One more week. One more week. And I fear that if I rock the boat that our lawyer will skip out on us and we will have to pay thousands more to get the original suit going again.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

-- Olifan

[aaron]

Contact the court and ask them to look up the case. They should be able tell you if in fact there is a default in place, and if any proceedings are pending.