By reader acclaim, from the Illinois county that furnishes so much material for this site: “Alton attorney Emert Wyss thought he could make money in a Madison County class action lawsuit, but he accidentally sued himself instead.” Representing a client who’d bought and then refinanced a house, Wyss advised her that she might be entitled to file a lawsuit against the company that wrote the original mortgage over the $60 fee it charged for faxing two payoff statements, and soon signed her up for a class-action suit to be handled by himself and several other law firms, including the prominent Lakin firm. However, it developed that a company called Centerre Title, owned by Wyss himself, had been the party that collected the allegedly improper fees at closing, and when the mortgage-company defendant learned of this it moved to add both Centerre and Wyss as third-party defendants, much as Jerry, in the old cartoons, sometimes succeeds in bringing Tom’s tail around in circular fashion and presenting it for him to bite. The judge granted the motion, and rather than persist in a suit against himself Wyss resigned the client’s representation. The Madison County Record’s coverage includes deposition-transcript excerpts that serve as a reminder of how essentially passive clients often get steered into class actions in which the lawyers are the real parties in interest (Steve Corris, “Alton attorney accidentally sues himself”, Madison County Record, Mar. 8).

Filed under: ethics, Illinois, Madison County