Two of the nation’s most prominent experts on the ethics of contingency fees, Prof. Lester Brickman of Cardozo School of Law and Prof. Richard Painter of the University of Illinois College of Law, are the guests in the second monthly “Featured Discussion” at Point Of Law, which gets started later today. Jim Copland sets the stage here and David Giacalone, whose site is another key resource for those interested in the ethics of fees, explains why you should care. Update: discussion has started.
Posts Tagged ‘ethics’
Client neglect: Fagan ordered to pay $3.4 million
Attorney Edward Fagan, much publicized for his role in Holocaust and other reparations controversies, “is facing a $3.2 million legal malpractice judgment for suing the wrong party in a personal injury case and failing to oppose its dismissal.” Former client Allen C. Tavel sued Fagan, saying he had neglected a product liability case against Honda Motor Corp. and the manufacturer of a seat belt that allegedly failed over an accident in which Tavel was seriously injured. “Fagan did not contest Tavel’s malpractice suit, which resulted in a default judgment. In May, Justice Shirley Kornreich of Manhattan Supreme Court awarded Tavel $1.2 million for his economic losses and $2 million for pain and suffering.” (Anthony Lin, “Personal Injury Client Wins Malpractice Award Against Holocaust Victims’ Lawyer”, New York Law Journal, Aug. 12). Fagan has been the subject of extensive coverage on this site, including Jun. 24-25, 2002; Apr. 2 of this year and links from there. More: Feb. 5, 2005.
The helping professions
North Carolina: “Raleigh lawyer Larkin Kirkman was paid more last year for representing poor people in court — more than $137,000 — than I. Beverly Lake earned as chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court. … [Kirkman] represents juveniles, parents accused of abusing or neglecting their children and defendants charged with low-level felonies and misdemeanors.”
“Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Donald W. Stephens questioned whether some lawyers are being honest about the hours they spend defending those cases. ‘Many of us were shocked to find that some of the highest-paid lawyers on this list participated in no jury trials during that payment period and represented very few indigent defendants charged with serious felonies,’ Stephens said.” However, Kirkman said that some of the money paid him in 2003 was for 2002 work and that his previous years’ earnings from the county had been lower, at $87,750 for 2002 and $76,648 for 2001. (Andrea Weigl, “Lawyer fees criticized in Wake”, Raleigh News & Observer, Jul. 16).
Baron & Budd
Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review Online (“Robber Baron?”, Jul. 15) thinks the Department of Justice would be warranted in opening a RICO probe of the Dallas-based firm based on the contents of a detailed statement attached by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) to a report of the Senate Judiciary Committee, exploring at length the allegations concerning Baron & Budd’s practices in asbestos litigation (PDF) (see pp. 81-184 and specifically 86-137). For much more, see Jun. 17 and the many links from there.
Spoliation at the U.P. line
“In one recent 18-month period, seven federal and state courts imposed sanctions on Union Pacific, the nation’s biggest railroad, for destroying or failing to preserve evidence in crossing accidents, and an eighth court ordered a case retried. One sanction has since been overturned on appeal.” Big New York Times front-pager endorses charges from plaintiff’s bar that the railroad has been less than diligent in preserving potentially unhelpful evidence after rail-motor vehicle crashes (Walt Bogdanich, “In Deaths at Rail Crossings, Missing Evidence and Silence”, Jul. 11).
“Failure to Plead 17200 Claim = Malpractice”
Legal Reader (Jun. 22) on a new development in the saga of California’s please-abuse-me law, s. 17200: “according to California’s First District Court of Appeal, failing to include a cause of action under 17200 in many civil actions may actually constitute malpractice, even if the plaintiffs’ attorney thought it unwarranted or unjustified. The opinion was filed today in Janik v. Rudy, Exelrod & Zieff. …
“My problem is that the Court’s reasoning here applies to almost any civil lawsuit against a ‘business’ in California. As a rule, if you can state a cause of action for anything, you can also state a cause of action under section 17200, as whatever wrongs constitute the first will also constitute the second. By including section 17200 you automatically get a bunch of ‘freebies,’ such as: four year statute of limitations, the ability to recover on behalf of other non-parties, and most likely a case that is at least partially impenetrable to a petition for arbitration.
“In fact, most California civil lawsuits already include section 17200 claims, but now lawyers may be subject to malpractice claims (even from non-clients) if they file compaints that don’t.” For an analogous problem, see “Omit a peripheral defendant, get sued for legal malpractice”, Feb. 15-17, 2002. More: Declarations and Exclusions analyzed the case Jun. 24, pointing out that the ruling, while exposing the defendant attorneys to a claim of breach of duty, does not establish on the merits whether or not they did breach a duty.
Update: Forbes on Lodi mess
Champerty in the suites: “Lehman Brothers’ hopes of underwriting some juicy tort litigation crashed badly, leaving behind the toxic residue of avarice and gullibility.” Forbes examines one California town’s “man-made legal disaster”, a saga previously covered in our posts of Jan. 12, Jan. 17 and May 8 (Scott Woolley, “Municipal bombs”, Forbes, Jun. 21).
The cop and the criminal defense attorney
Ferrell Hunter, a sheriff’s deputy in Tunica County, Mississippi, was a Stakhanovite arrester of motorists on DUI charges, hailed by the state chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving as the state’s top such enforcement officer. But something MADD did not realize was that Tunica County has had a peculiarly low rate of actual conviction for DUI defendants. It turned out that Hunter had an arrangement with former Oxford attorney Joe Gregory Stewart: Hunter would provide Stewart with the names of motorists he arrested, Stewart would approach them and sign them up as clients, Hunter would then fail to make court dates so that the charges would be dropped, and Stewart would kick him back $200 or $300 per case. Now Hunter will serve three years probation after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit extortion, while Stewart was sentenced to three years probation, hit with a $20,000 fine and disbarred. (Andy Wise, “Former Tunica County Deputy Sentenced For Fixing DUI’s”, WREG, Mar. 10)(via Lori Patel).
“Sex, lawyers, secrets at heart of sealed legal case”
According to a story in the San Antonio Express-News, husband-and-wife legal partners Ted H. and Mary Schorlemer Roberts received money in a curious sequence of events. Mary, claiming to seek “no strings” discreet encounters, would seduce men over an Internet dating service. Ted would then write the men (in legal documents sometimes typed by Mary) and notify them that he planned to seek intrusive and public civil discovery to investigate whether the affair brought forward potential causes of action that were flimsy at best; the men would pay tens of thousands of dollars for a release and confidentiality agreement. (As the law firm’s web site puts it, “We believe in a team approach.”) Because of Texas’s permissive legal ethical rules, prosecutors decided they couldn’t pursue extortion charges; state law permits Roberts to bring “creative” claims and to take discovery in advance of filing a lawsuit, and the prosecution had no way of proving that Roberts’s intent in submitting the documents was a bluff rather than a “legitimate” lawsuit.
The newspaper found out only because another lawyer, Robert V. West III, sought to raise the scheme as part of a separate business dispute with the Roberts; fans of poetic justice will note that the Roberts accuse West of blackmail, and brought disciplinary charges against West and his lawyer to the state bar. The bar is investigating West, but, apparently, not the Roberts. Everyone involved denies any wrongdoing. Roberts unsuccessfully brought suit to prevent publication of the story, but the court records remain sealed. (Maro Robbins and Joseph S. Stroud, Jun. 13) (via Bashman).
Houston accident operators indicted
A federal grand jury has indicted Houston attorney Gene Burd and chiropractic clinic owner Paul Samson Christie on tax charges. Among the allegations against Burd are that he employed runners to bring in car-crash victims which he signed up as clients and referred as patients to the chiropractic clinics; that the clinics kicked back about half the fees they charged to him; that he conspired to defraud insurance companies in the resulting lawsuits; that he settled some clients’ cases without their knowledge or consent, and misrepresented to them the share of the settlement money that he was keeping; and (perhaps his most fateful lapse, if the allegations prove true) that he failed fully to report the income from all this for federal tax purposes. Lawyers for Burd and Christie assert that their clients are not guilty and Burd’s lawyer attributes the indictment to “a misunderstanding by the government”. (U.S. Department of Justice press release, Apr. 12; Mary Alice Robbins, “Houston Attorney, Clinic Owner Face Federal Tax Charges”, Texas Lawyer, Apr. 23).