“…are those where lawyers sue lawyers.” Profile of Georgia attorney Frank Beltran, who specializes in filing lawsuits against lawyers: “‘When lawyers split up it’s worse than a marriage,’ Beltran said, observing that some get vindictive as ‘ego and testosterone’ kick in.” And then there are the wrangles over how to split fees (Meredith Hobbs, “Legal Malpractice Brings Unique View of Brethren’s Vices”, Fulton County Daily Report, Dec. 4).
Posts Tagged ‘ethics’
“Dear FTC: please adopt tougher regulations…”
Who writes to a federal agency encouraging it to adopt regulations imposing new burdens on the private sector? In at least one recent case, the public-spirited correspondent turned out to be a lawyer representing a short-seller who would profit if the enactment of new regulations caused a target company’s stock price to fall:
In one instance, a lawyer representing an investor who had shorted Pre-Paid Legal’s stock filed documents with the agency urging the rules’ adoption. Without explaining his client’s motivation, the lawyer, Hal Neier, wrote that “Pre-Paid and companies like it provide concrete examples of the very sort of practices that the proposed rule was designed to eradicate.”
The New York Times has more (Charles Duhigg, “Why Short Sellers Want to Crash the Tupperware Party”, Nov. 13).
Disputed $30,000 legal fee
The client’s battle contesting it has cost more than $300,000 so far. (Mary Alice Robbins, “The Seven-Year War: Former Clients to Continue Fighting Firm Over Legal Fees”, Texas Lawyer, Sept. 19).
Update: Calif. ADA lawyer suspended
Setbacks for key figures in a prominent disabled-access filing mill:
Two of the attorneys behind an onslaught of ADA lawsuits in California — including at least 20 involving Monterey County restaurants and wineries — have run into serious legal troubles of their own.
Thomas Frankovich, who represented plaintiff Jarek Molski in hundreds of handicapped-access lawsuits over the last five years, was suspended June 19 from practicing in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The six-month suspension came after one judge on the court, Edward Rafeedie, declared Frankovich a “vexatious litigant” and said he would recommend Frankovich for disciplinary action because of his “abusive and predatory litigation practices.”
(Paul Miller, “Indictment, suspension for two ADA lawyers”, Carmel Pine Cone, Jul. 21). 
Also in June, as was mentioned here in a post at the time (Jul. 5; see also Patterico, Jul. 1), Los Angeles attorney Stephen Yagman, who had represented Frankovich in defense of his ADA practice, was himself indicted on federal charges of tax evasion and bankruptcy fraud. In February 2005, after Judge Rafeedie had threatened Frankovich with sanctions, Yagman had said that “Judge Rafeedie’s mean-spiritedness, his cruelty, and his contempt for civil rights make Hitler look like a humanitarian.” (Paul Miller, “ADA lawyer’s new strategy: Insult the judge”, Feb. 11, 2005). More on Yagman: Jessica Seigel, “Cop griller”, George, Mar. 1998; Patterico, Jun. 3, 2004.
More Carmel Pine Cone coverage of Frankovich and Molski here, here, here and here. Our coverage: Sept. 21 and Dec. 12, 2004, Jan. 8 and Mar. 18, 2005. And for a very different point of view, once again, here’s Mary Johnson, “Jarek Molski’s problem — and I don’t mean access”, Ragged Edge, Oct. 24, 2005, arguing that Frankovich and Molski just aren’t good enough at getting their story out.
Law firm extracts $200 million in class action
…and gets sued for malpractice by a second law firm contending that even more would have been extracted had the winning lawyers thrown in a claim under California’s wide-open unfair competition law. Result: San Francisco’s Rudy, Exelrod & Zieff has agreed to pay $1.5 million to resolve the claims (whether “for nuisance value” or “in contemplation of losing” will have to be left for others to decide), malpractice insurance rates for plaintiff’s lawyers may experience upward pressure, and class action lawyers have been sent a lesson, namely that they’d better throw in every colorable charge to play it safe in future. The underlying lawsuit was an overtime action against the Farmers Insurance group. (Matthew Hirsch, “Rudy Exelrod Settles Malpractice Suit”, The Recorder/Law.com, Oct. 11; Internet and Class Action Law Blog, Oct. 11).
Jack Thompson, officer of the court
When anti-videogame crusader and perennial Overlawyered favorite Jack Thompson (Sept. 26, Oct. 15, etc.) lost his case over “Bully”, he dashed off the following letter to the judge who ruled against him:
Dear Judge Friedman:
Now that you have consigned innumerable children to skull fractures, eye injuries from slingshots, and beatings with baseball bats, without a hearing as to the danger, let me tell you a few things, with all respect for your office and with no respect for the arbitrary way in which you handled this matter. I can handle an adverse ruling by a judge. I’ve had plenty of those in my lifetime, and that’s fine. But the way you conducted yourself today helps explain why a great Dade County Judge, the late Rhea Pincus Grossman, could not abide you. She was not the only one . . . .
Next time you promise a “hearing,” I’ll bring a parent with me whose kid is in the ground because of a kid who trained to kill him or her on a violent video game. Try mocking that person, I dare you.
Full text of the letter here courtesy GamePolitics; via Lat who got it from ACSBlog. And a commenter at ACSBlog writes:
Jack Thompson did his part to inspire me to go to law school. I knew that if people of his mental capacity could succeed in the profession, I certainly could.
More: GamePolitics.com reports that lawyers for the game company are seeking to have Thompson held in contempt of court (further update here; h/t RebeccaFrog).
No charges against Fields in Pellicano case?
So claims Nikki Finke. Ten lawyers from his firm have apparently testified before a grand jury. (David M. Halbfinger and Allison Hope Weiner, “Lawyers Called to Grand Jury in Pellicano Wiretap Case”, New York Times, Oct. 18). Our previous thirteen posts on the Pellicano case.
Neuborne fee fracas, cont’d
New at Point of Law: foiling dishonest lawyers
Over at Point of Law, Boston attorney Peter Morin and I have collaborated on a new column about a simple way to discourage bad-apple lawyers from exploiting vulnerable clients.
…The simple fix is a rule that goes by the name “payee notification”. It would require insurance companies to notify a claimant when they forward a settlement check to claimant’s counsel. At a single stroke, the client is made aware of the timing and size of the settlement, taking away most of the leeway a dishonest lawyer has to withhold the client’s funds.
Several other states, including California, New York, and Connecticut, have already instituted payee-notification rules, and they have worked well. … So who would oppose it? Interesting that you should ask. …
“Shorts’ nemesis dumped a client’s shares”
“Texas plaintiffs’ lawyer James ‘Wes’ Christian, the legal mind behind the rash of claims alleging naked short-selling in penny stocks…was a consistent seller of several companies that he is representing in high-profile and bitter legal fights,” according to records obtained by the New York Post. For example, “in May 2001, several months after Nanopierce retained Christian to launch one of the initial lawsuits against naked short-sellers – and after the publicity surrounding the legal battle goosed the stock price – he began unloading blocks of stock.” Christian is partnering with regular Overlawyered mentionee John O’Quinn on the naked-short-selling lawsuits, which have not fared well in court thus far. (Roddy Boyd, New York Post, Aug. 18).
Reporter Christopher Faille interviewed me for an August 23 article in the subscriber-only HedgeWorld. The article quotes me as saying that Mr. Christian
“seems to be preserving a possible line of argument that inducing a stock-price rise isn’t really part of his business plan, he just happens to own these stocks because the companies pay him in shares, he would have been happy to take cash payment instead, et cetera.”
That was precisely what Mr. Christian said in the interview Tuesday—that he took the stock instead of cash simply because Nanopierce didn’t have the cash necessary for him to do the original pre-litigation due diligence.
Older ethical rules — now often fallen into disuse — used to discourage or prohibit lawyers from taking stakes in enterprises they represented in litigation. As the HedgeWorld article quotes me as saying, “If what attorney Christian is doing is consistent with the ethical rules of the Texas bar, maybe it’s time to revisit those rules.”