A recent Law 360 story by Caroline Simson, “Taiwanese Co. Says It Won’t Arbitrate Fisch Sigler Fee Dispute” reports that a Taiwanese manufacturer of smartphone camera lenses is pressing a DC federal court to quash arbitration initiated by intellectual property boutique Fisch Sigler LLP seeking millions in additional fees for its work on a "meandering, inconclusive" and expensive patent lawsuit that settled last year.  Largan Precision Co. Ltd. told the court in the lawsuit filed May 10 that it never gave its informed consent to arbitrate the dispute with Fisch Sigler, which is set to be heard by the DC Bar Attorney/Client Arbitration Board, or the ACAB.

The company noted that while the DC Court of Appeals requires any attorney who is a DC Bar member to submit to arbitration before the ACAB if a client chooses that venue to pursue a fee dispute in matters with some connection to DC, there has never been any such rule for clients.  Largan argued that since it intends to challenge the validity of an arbitration agreement that was "quietly added" to its engagement agreement with the firm near the end of their negotiations, that question should be left to the court.

"[G]overning precedent makes plain that only a court, and not an arbitration panel, can decide the threshold issue of whether a valid agreement to arbitrate exists, unless there is clear and unmistakable evidence that the parties agreed to have that question decided by the arbitrators," the company wrote.  "There is nothing here to suggest that the parties ever discussed, let alone agreed to, the ACAB deciding the specific issue of arbitrability."

Largan alleges in the litigation that the firm has already gotten $4.5 million in "fixed fee" payments.  It's now seeking an additional $5.6 million in success fees — despite the fact that Largan agreed to settle the litigation in Texas due to the outcome of parallel litigation in Taiwan that Fisch Sigler had not worked on, according to the brief.  The underlying dispute for which Largan engaged Fisch Sigler involved another Taiwanese company called Ability Opto-Electronics Technology Co. Ltd., which Largan accused of misappropriating its trade secrets in 2013.

While litigation was ongoing in Taiwan, Largan hired Fisch Sigler to file a patent infringement lawsuit in the U.S. against Ability Opto-Electronics Technology and two other entities in Texas.  Largan alleges that while the lawsuit was ongoing, Fisch Sigler charged a fixed fee despite not doing all the work that was supposed to be included under that fee.  That included depositions and a hearing in mid-2020 that Largan says never took place.

Largan won some $50 million in the Taiwanese litigation in early 2021, and it subsequently approached Fisch Sigler about settling the Texas litigation.  The company claims that the litigation had gone poorly, and that there was no reason to continue with it at that point.  It was then that the firm attempted to collect the success fee "based on the resolution of a litigation in Taiwan in which it had no role — and despite achieving nothing resembling success from the meandering, inconclusive, yet very expensive litigation it had pursued for Largan against [Ability Opto-Electronics Technology] and others in Texas and, later, California," according to the suit.