A recent New York Law Journal story, “DLA Piper Emails Reveal Firm Overbilled, Former Client Says,” reports that a former DLA Piper client who is challenging the firm over attorney fees has filed with the court what he claims are internal emails by DLA attorneys (pdf) who discuss deliberate overbilling, with on attorney allegedly writing about another’s “churn that bill, baby!” approach. Attorneys for the former client, energy executive Adam Victor, say in court papers that the emails “shock the conscience.”
“Until now, there probably has never been a written admission where members of a law firm have flatly acknowledged they have engaged in such a reprehensible and damning conduct,” Larry Hutcher and Josh Krakowsky write in DLA Piper v. Victor, in Manhattan Supreme Court. Victor is requesting punitive damages of $22.47 million, which he says is 1 percent of DLA’s reported revenue for 2012.
The new allegations arise from a lawsuit brought against Victor in February 2012 for $678,763 in past due legal bills. DLA was hired in April 2010 by Project Orange Associates (POA), which is owed by Victor, to handle its bankruptcy before being disqualified due to a conflict. In court papers, Victor claimed the firm acted as his company’s “ghost counsel” after being ordered to withdraw and continue to bill him. He alleged a “sweeping practice of over-billing.” In the most recent filings, Victor and his attorneys argued that they now have proof of that allegation.
In one exhibit from an email dated May 20, 2010, then-DLA attorney Erich Eisenegger writes to attorneys Christopher Thomson and Jeremy Johnson, “I hear we are already 200K over our estimate—that’s Team DLA Piper!” According to court papers, Thomson replied to Eisenegger and Johnson: “What was our estimate? But Tim [Walsh] brought Vince [Roldan] [two other DLA Piper attorneys working on POA] in to work on the objection for whatever reason, and now Vince has random people working full time on random research projects in standard ‘churn that bill, baby!’ mode. That bill shall know no limits.”