Firing your lawyers? Be careful what you say about them in doing so. William and Elizabeth Margrabe had grown increasingly dissatisfied with the legal work done on their behalf by the firm of Sexter and Warmflash in a Westchester County, N.Y. lawsuit over the sale of a stake in a family business. In a letter firing the firm, Mr. Margrabe charged that its work was “fraught with missteps, poor legal judgments, failure to protect your client’s rights on repeated occasions, and poor, adversarial, or misleading communications with your clients.” He further accused the attorneys of pursuing their own interests over those of clients in seeking a hasty resolution of some issues, and also of charging a usurious interest rate on its fee. He copied the letter to the new lawyers he had hired to take over the matter.
How did Sexter & Warmflash respond? It sued the Margrabes for $1 million for defamation. Trial court judge Shirley Werner Kornreich ruled that its suit could proceed, and ruled outright in Sexter’s favor on the Margrabes’ liability for the “usurious fee” allegation, but an appeals court reversed, ruling that the Margrabes were protected by a privilege extended to statements made as part of a legal proceeding. (Anthony Lin, “Law Firm’s Defamation Suit Against Former Client Dismissed”, New York Law Journal, Jan. 10).
2 Comments
Sexter and Warmflash, huh?
They should be sued just for the name of the firm.
It’s easy to believe this family’s allegations of incompetence. A handful of people knew of this unhappy client before the firm sued, and they were lawyers that would know the facts of the dispute anyway. Now anyone who follows this sort of news does. And that name… who is going to forget a name like Sexter and Warmflash?
Is there anyone who’d like to share more about charges made during a judicial proceedings being privileged? Is this something in law primarily intended to keep lawyers from being locked in an endless series of lawsuits with one another?
–Mike Perry, Seattle