A recent Law 360 story by Bill Wichert, “NJ, Texas Firms Unlawfully Pocketed Mesh Funds, Suit Says,” reports that law firms including Nagel Rice LLP and Potts Law Firm improperly pocketed attorney fees and expenses from the settlements of roughly 1,450 pelvic mesh cases in New Jersey state court by using invalid retainer agreements or no agreements at all, according to a proposed class action made available. The lawsuit, filed in Bergen County Superior Court, says the firms unlawfully retained excessive fee percentages, deducted those fees "off the top" of gross settlement amounts, took expenses out of clients' portions of the recovery, and engaged in invalid fee-sharing.
"The defendants were negligent in that their conduct fell below and breached the applicable standard of care, because they failed to ensure that all the cases were retained, filed, litigated, settled and disbursed in accordance with New Jersey law,” according to the complaint filed by Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman LLC. The alleged misconduct was "reckless and undertaken with willful and wanton disregard" for the rights of plaintiff Debbie Gore and the proposed class members, the complaint said.
In addition to New Jersey-based Nagel Rice and Texas-based Potts Law Firm, the defendants include Texas-based firms Bailey Cowan Heckaman PLLC, Junell & Associates PLLC, Burnett Law Firm and Houston attorney Annie McAdams. The complaint, which includes legal malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty and other claims, asserts that the defendants should be ordered to disgorge all attorney fees and expenses from the cases and be limited to collecting attorney fees on a quantum meruit basis.
"On information and belief, defendants performed very little, if any, actual legal services of value on behalf of plaintiff and the proposed class members, thus entitling defendants to little or no recovery in quantum meruit," the complaint said.
Gore, a Texas resident, has demanded that the defendants provide "a full accounting" of the retainer agreements in the cases, the settlements, and the attorney fees and expenses deducted from those settlements. Superior Court Judge Rachelle Lea Harz ordered the defendants to appear in court on July 11 to show cause why the court should not issue an order requiring them to turn over that information. Gore entered into an invalid retainer agreement with one or more of the defendants in May 2013 that provided for 40% in attorney fees that would be deducted from the gross settlement amount and for expenses to be taken out of her share of the recovery, the complaint says.
Those provisions ran afoul of a New Jersey rule governing contingent fees, the complaint says. Under that rule, an attorney can collect a fee of 33.33% of the first $750,000 recovered and then smaller percentages for subsequent amounts, and those fees must be based on the "net sum recovered" after deducting expenses.
The retainer agreement also "failed to disclose that some or all of the defendants were sharing the legal fees, and New Jersey law requires that all attorneys sharing in the legal fees — and the fee-sharing arrangement — be disclosed to and approved by the client in writing," the complaint said. The agreement "allowed for the sharing of legal fees to attorneys who provided no legal services," the complaint said.
Nagel Rice and Potts — even though they were not "retained to act as legal counsel pursuant to a retainer agreement compliant with New Jersey law" — filed a suit on Gore's behalf in July 2014 as part of multicounty litigation against Johnson & Johnson and C.R. Bard Inc., according to the complaint. Following settlements in the roughly 1,450 cases filed by Nagel Rice and Potts, the defendants improperly retained attorney fees and expenses and took part in the unlawful fee-sharing, the complaint says.