It’s time for another roundup of law firm-related litigation and, like we found when putting together our last installment in May, there’s no shortage of cases to cover.
Aside from new suits being filed, a few firms in recent months have shelled out decent sums to make litigation go away. Greenberg Traurig and Quarles & Brady, for instance, collectively coughed up $87.5 million to resolve claims that they contributed to a $900 million Ponzi scheme perpetrated by two mortgage-industry clients. O’Melveny & Myers, meanwhile, agreed to pay $1.5 million to the trustee of bankrupt Southern California-based land developer Empire Land to settle conflict of interest claims, Law 360 reported.
And, as sibling publication New York Law Journal reported, Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney and its insurers agreed in early July to pay $60 million to settle claims in the 2002 bankruptcy of its former client, Adelphia Communications Corp. The Pennsylvania-based cable TV company has been mired in controversy since going bust, including the conviction of the company’s founder, president and CEO John Rigas, as well as his son Timothy, of bank and securities fraud. According to court filings, several transactions Buchanan advised Adelphia on “are alleged to have enabled the Rigas Family to loot tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars from the debtors.”
In an example of fighting a lawsuit to the very end, Chadbourne & Parke is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to review a case that it and other defendants, including Proskauer Rose, lost in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Law360 has more on the case, a proposed securities class action implicating the firm in the Ponzi scheme of imprisoned fraudster Allen Stanford.
We’ve also noticed a slew of law firms pursuing clients in court for unpaid bills. The most sizable among those comes from Mayer Brown, which hopes to recover more than $5 million in unpaid fees from Pacific Seafood Group, a seafood processing and distribution company. Sibling publication The Blog of Legal Times reported on the firm’s lawsuit, filed July 18 in Washington, D.C., state court, alleging Pacific strung Mayer Brown along from July 2010 until earlier this year, continually paying only a portion of legal bills for work on a series of antitrust claims.
Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton also went on the offensive, suing its client Kohl’s Department Stores for $608,000 in allegedly unpaid bills related to the firm’s defense of the retailer in a trademark infringement case filed by the actress Zooey Deschanel. Sheppard lays out its claims in a more than 100-page complaint, initially filed in Los Angeles state court and transferred to federal court July 25.
A handful of other firms are going after smaller claims, including: Epstein Becker & Green, which sued the New York Real Estate Institute in New York state court June 29 for $59,000 in legal services related to trademark and general corporate matters; Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman, which sought judicial intervention June 26 in a year-old New York state court suit seeking $242,000 from management consulting firm Mitchell Madison Group; Katten Muchin Rosenman, which sued private equity firm KBR Capital Partners for nearly $43,000 in legal fees in New York state court July 31; and Stevens & Lee, which is seeking $86,000 from CleanTech Innovations through a Pennsylvania federal court suit filed July 11.
One law firmPaul Hastingsfound itself caught up in a physical altercation involving a deposition that ended in a fateful slap, while anotherQuinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivanfaces a malicious prosecution suit filed by a party in Nigeria that is entirely under seal.
