A recent Law 360 story by Lauraann Wood, “Gaming Co. Says Jackson Lewis Can’t Collect Fee ‘Windfall’,” reports that a now-closed gaming terminal company has said that an Illinois state judge should vacate a $328,000 judgment against it and prevent Jackson Lewis PC from collecting a "windfall" of attorney fees based on a legally unenforceable engagement letter and unsupported charges.
LZ Entertainment LLC said on that the judgment entered against it in an underlying malpractice suit requires it to pay the New York-based firm $134,000 in purportedly unpaid attorney fees and $194,000 in service charges it was never legally entitled to seek or recover. The entertainment company says the court should vacate the judgment and let it fight the charges, arguing that the order is rooted in a "self-serving" engagement letter it never received and charges the firm can't support with invoice documentation. LZ Entertainment also claims it didn't know its prior counsel hadn't responded to the underlying summary judgment request that resulted in the judgment's entry.
LZ claims that after Jane McFetridge, now the firm's Chicago office principal, told company manager Stefen Lippitz that Jackson Lewis' work could cost "as much as $80,000," it agreed to let the firm defend it in a June 2014 lawsuit over an employee who worked for a rival. The company says Jackson Lewis began performing legal work on its behalf that June, but the firm never sent it an engagement letter and didn't send out its first invoice until two months later.
Lippitz received a copy of the engagement letter in December 2014, "well after" the firm's engagement and litigation in the rival's lawsuit had ended, according to the petition. The firm purportedly sent the letter through physical mail, even though all of the parties' correspondence had been through email, according to the petition. "Critically and surprisingly," LZ claims, the firm's engagement letter included a provision stating that the firm would assume its terms were acceptable unless the company responded in writing to the contrary.
"Attempting to bind a client to the terms of an engagement letter without the client executing the letter is unusual and problematic, to say the very least," the company said. LZ also said Jackson Lewis had already billed it for more than $130,000 by the time it received its first invoice in August 2014. That invoice reflected a purported prior balance of more than $61,000, but "it would make no sense for there to be a prior balance" if that was the firm's first invoice since its June 2014 engagement, LZ said.
Jackson Lewis produced a copy of its July 2014 invoice in February, while responding to an investigation that LZ launched after receiving the firm's citation to discover assets, according to the petition. That invoice reflected a $61,000 balance for attorney fees and disbursements incurred for the month of June 2014, but the firm "could not provide any evidence whatsoever demonstrating that Jackson Lewis ever sent the July 2014 Invoice to LZ," the company claimed. "Indeed, LZ never received the July 2014 invoice from Jackson Lewis," the company said.
The company said the invoices for its June 2014 and July 2014 fees also "raise more questions about what actual services were performed, as there are multiple entries by the same attorneys for the same days on both invoices." And because Jackson Lewis never sent LZ its July invoice, the company never got the opportunity to "pump the brakes" on the fees the firm was assessing, the petition argued.
Jackson Lewis sought payment of the fees LZ allegedly owed as a counterclaim in a malpractice suit relating to a revenue share agreement it helped the company enter with its rival, Accel Entertainment Gaming LLC. The firm didn't attach the July 2014 invoice to a summary judgment bid it renewed on that claim in March 2019, submitting only its August 2014 bill and various other invoices reflecting "service charges," according to the petition.