your firm WAS the “unethical, corrupt” party in this case…no matter who you were “trying to do right by.”

And by the way…this expert was “doing right” for himself, not your client: by appeasing a long term client so he can keep running from court room to court room picking up checks…

Your #3 is still irrelevant, because the distinction you make is without an economic difference when the experts are repeat players and the practice of fee reductions after the fact are commonplace.

We settled the case, got the check from the insurer, and then made arrangements to start paying the bills. At that point is when the fee was reduced, not prior to or during settlement negotiations, so we mislead no one.

And btw, point 3 IS on topic because the topic shifted to an attack on the actions of my former employer. More fully describing those actions is certainly relevant.

And to all, a good night.

But you do interestingly dig yourself deeper with another irrelevant point, #4, since it suggests that settlement negotiations were done in bad faith by misleading the opposing party about the true extent of the economic damages.

1: I am only privy to the exact nature of the reduction in ONE case, in which I was present during the phone call in which the expert offered to drop his fees. I know for a fact there was no prior agreement in place regarding raising or lowering the fees dependent upon the outcome of the case. The expert had already received payment for a previous invoice prior to the case being settled.

2: Any time ANY fees were reduced, it was fully disclosed and signed off by the client. I NEVER saw fees increased, even in one case that settled for six figures higher than expected.

3: I did not in any post agree that this instance was a contingent fee agreement. There was no prior written or oral agreement that the expert’s pay depended upon or would be modified in any way by the outcome of the case. I cannot answer whether or not in the other instances I saw this happen there was or was not such an agreement, as I wasn’t present.

4: From time to time, we were able to convince treating physicians, ambulance companies, etc. to lower their bills, too. The savings was disclosed to and authorized by the client, who then received a larger settlement. Since the client entered into the agreement with those service providers prior to contacting us, I don’t see an ethical violation.

5: In some cases, WE dropped our fees in order to ensure the client received a fair settlement. In one case small case I worked on, we waived all of our fees. That’s not unethical, either. It was just us trying to do right by our clients.

7: I have never denied that de facto contingency fee agreements may occur in the industry, and if they do they are unethical. I am fairly confident they didn’t occur at my law firm because quite frankly, we rarely had any cases big enough to warrant one; $1,500 in expert fees isn’t that big of a deal.

7: Thanks for the links about Texas. In my experience there, I found the judicial system in Texas to be ridiculously corrupt and full of ethical violations. This is just more evidence.

Deoxy and others: If you care to continue this discussion via email, you are more than welcome to do so, or you can bring it to my comment thread. Out of respect for Ted and Overlawyered, I’ll drop it here.

If it is commonplace for the fees paid to be higher on a win or big settlement and lower on a loss of small settlement, no matter who suggests the changes, it is de facto contigency fees.

Again, as has been said several times now, WHO makes the changes in the pay is completely irrelevant; the “WHO” question is the defense you keep coming back to.

For reasons I explained, that’s the economic equivalent of a contingency fee agreement.

Is it possible that a lawyer accused of these facts could escape regulatory sanction? Well, given Texas’s record of not disciplining attorneys for egregious fraud (e.g., the Baron & Budd Script Memo and Fabila v. Chrysler), it’s certainly possible that the disciplinary authorities would also ignore these particular facts. It doesn’t change the reality that it is economically indistinguishable from transactions that are explicitly barred by the rules. If the regular pattern and practice is to have these discounts (and, as you said, you saw it “several” times in your short employment history), and they’re not disclosed, it’s also a fraud on the court. There’s no reason to perceive the transaction as any less unethical because the expert suggested it first, and you haven’t provided one, even as you’ve agreed that it’s a de facto contingency fee agreement.

I am not denying that such agreements sometimes happen, but I am unequivocally stating that such an agreement never happened in THIS INSTANCE.

For whatever reason – perhaps sympathy for the plaintiff, perhaps hoping for future business, or perhaps out of guilt for padding his invoice – the physician in question offered on his own to reduce his invoice because the client got a small settlement.

You have yet to acknowledge what I’ve actually written, let alone rebut it “several times.” Perhaps you’re assuming the attorney I worked for tried to skirt the rules and enter into an under-the-table contingency agreement, but such an assumption can only be based upon your own prejudices towards plaintiff’s lawyers and not upon any evidence I’ve presented.

Your usage of “de facto” leads me to beliv that you don’t know what it means. Either that, or Ted’s last post (about simply repeating rebutted statements without acknowledging the rebuttal) is spot on.

Care to tell me which it it?