A recent Daily Report story, “Attorney Fee Check Ends Decade of Litigation –With a Twist,” reports that, a decade of litigation between Atlanta-area doctors ended last week with the satisfying swoosh of a big check landing on a lawyer's desk—settling a $405,000 judgment for legal costs.
"Our clients are ecstatic," attorney Derek Bauer of BakerHostetler wrote in an email Friday evening. "We've already been paid. This makes our clients whole."
Bauer handled the contract dispute with Gerald Davidson Jr. of Mahaffey Pickens Tucker in Lawrenceville, Georgia. "Literally as I am typing this, my assistant is walking into my office with the full attorneys' fees check from the adversary!" Bauer wrote. He had the check hand-delivered to his clients that evening.
The legal battle started in 2006 when a group of kidney doctors terminated one of their partners. Dr. Mazen Abdalla then sued his former colleagues, alleging breach of contract.
In a 2014 trial, he asked the jury to award him $4.8 million against the partnership, Atlanta Nephrology Referral Center, according to lawyers on both sides. Abdalla alleged that his partners switched the signature page on his contract to a new version that allowed them to vote him out.
The jury rejected the switched signature page claim and sided with the partnership, awarding nothing to Abdalla. Instead, in May 2014, the jury awarded the partnership $258,000 in attorney fees, saying Abdalla had been "stubbornly litigious" or had caused his ex-partners "unnecessary trouble and expenses."
The trial had been scheduled for three days but went on for nine before a visiting judge who had taken the case over after the original judge resigned. After the trial, a new judge heard posttrial motions. Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Randy Rich threw out the fee award but then granted a new, larger award under a different statute. The Georgia Court of Appeals upheld the $405,000 fee award with a one-page order.
Abdalla was disappointed that the court chose not to explain the decision, according to his attorney, Michael Anderson, a solo in Lawrenceville. "My client is not happy," Anderson said.
The check hand-delivered Friday was for $147,000, which when combined with the $258,000 the doctors were holding in escrow until the case settled made up the full $405,000 in fees, according to lawyers on both sides.
Anderson said his client intends to continue to pursue a claim against his ex-partners through arbitration, as allowed under his contract. This time, he will be asking for $500,000 instead of nearly $5 million.
Asked about the arbitration claim late Monday, Bauer responded with another email: "That is the first I have heard that Dr. Abdalla intends to continue this quixotic vendetta in an arbitration; if he does it will end the same way this one did, and you will have yet another story to write."
The case is Abdalla v. Atlanta Nephrology, No. A16A0560.