Catherine Martin, The Daily Record Newswire
Two plaintiffs' attorneys are suing their former firm claiming they were terminated after they helped win a $390.5 million verdict and did not receive their fair share.
Wendy Fisher and Eric Fisher of Colorado firm Reilly Pozner were among the plaintiffs' team that worked a case heard in St. Louis involving a scheme related to prepaid funeral services.
A management company for a family of businesses collapsed in 2008 because of a Ponzi-like scheme that drained millions of dollars of the assets intended to cover consumers' prepaid future funeral services. Six people landed in federal prison over the scheme.
The Reilly Pozner clients, National Prearranged Services Inc. trusts, were the receiver for the company and insurance guaranty associations that stepped in to cover the damages.
In March 2015, a federal jury in St. Louis said that PNC Bank, which in 2008 absorbed National City, must pay NPS $390.5 million. The verdict was part of Missouri Lawyers Weekly's largest reported Verdict & Settlement of 2015.
The following June, the law firm terminated the Fishers, who are husband and wife, along with three other partners, five associates and seven staff members, the lawsuit, filed in March, states.
"Reilly and Pozner claimed the firm would soon run out of the money if it did not immediately terminate the Fishers and others despite RP's receipt of millions of dollars in contingency fee recoveries in late 2014 and early 2015, and entitlement to a share of the March 9, 2015 jury verdict," the suit states.
The firm hid from the Fishers and the other attorneys that "after the March 2015 jury verdict they would terminate the Fishers and others, wind down RP, and keep nearly 100% of RP's contingency fees from the bank trustee case - plus tens of millions of dollars of RP's mass tort recoveries - to fund their lavish lifestyles and impending retirements," the suit states.
An attorney representing Reilly and Pozner denied the allegations.
According to the suit, had the Fishers, who were founding attorneys of the firm, known "Reilly and Pozner would take the vast majority of contingency fee revenue, including 100% of RP's contingency share of pre-trial settlements," they would not have joined and devoted 15 years of their lives to the firm.
The Fishers are demanding Reilly Pozner turn over the Fishers' ownership interest in the firm's "recoveries from the bank trustee case settlements to date, past and future mass tort recoveries, and RP's share of the $390.5 million verdict and final judgment, or additional settlements, when received."
The Fishers are also entitled to treble damages, the suit says, as well as attorney fees and costs for the firm's "civil theft of that portion of RP's recoveries from past and future mass tort funds and the past and future bank trustee case settlement funds, verdict, and final judgment that rightfully belong to the Fishers."
Christina Habas, an attorney from Denver firm Keating Wagner Polidori Free who is representing Reilly Pozner in the suit, said she can't comment on specific allegations in the suit, but provided general comments.
"Any kind of law firm has to make decisions about how many staff they keep when they move forward based on the amount of business they have. They're very difficult decisions as you can imagine," she said. "Decisions are not made based on 'gee can we get out of paying someone what we may owe them.'"
Instead, she said nonequity attorneys and partners are "generously paid by the firm a salary" and receive bonuses.
"But there is no additional entitlement," she said. "And like most law firms the decision of what to do, how to manage the law firm and financial decisions, are left to the people who are equity partners."
Habas said she could not confirm the number of attorneys terminated, but said the firm "certainly had to make some hard decisions when they downsized."
Downsizing, she said, was "strictly a business decision."
The defendants filed a motion to compel arbitration, Habas said.
Published: Wed, May 04, 2016
