A recent Law360 story by Jessica Corso, “Houston Attorneys Sued for $5M Over Altered Fee Agreement,” reports that three Houston-based attorneys are being sued for around $5 million by a former client who claims that they deceived her into changing their fee agreement during a legal fight over her late father's will. Caroline Allison sued Jorge Borunda, Nicholas Abaza and Michael Trevino in Harris County District Court on Nov. 9, arguing that the attorneys should return most of the money she paid them to represent her in a probate dispute involving the will of her father, who died in 2017.
Allison claims that she agreed in 2019 to hire the lawyers on an hourly basis but, a year later, they asked for a change to a contingency fee agreement whereby they would get 35% of any money or assets she collected from her father's estate. According to the lawsuit, the lawyers made Allison believe that the case would go to trial and end up costing a lot of money. In reality, they knew that her father's second wife, with whom Allison was fighting over the estate, was close to a settlement at the time they asked for the 35% fee, according to the lawsuit.
"By October of 2020, the lawyers determined that the estate was worth more than $18 million," according to the complaint. "Unsatisfied with their current arrangement with Caroline, and with dollar signs in their eyes, the lawyers set upon a course of conduct to fraudulently induce Caroline to change her agreement from an hourly rate to a contingency fee." Six months after signing the new contingency agreement, the case settled, with Allison and her brother, who had also hired Borunda and Abaza, together receiving around $9.5 million, according to the lawsuit.
Allison claims that she ended up paying the lawyers $1.65 million more than she would have had she stuck to an hourly rate. She is suing for that money back, plus treble damages she said she was owed under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. She is alleging violations of the Texas law, as well as negligence, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud.