Property Owner sued to quiet title to real estate and prevailed but was unable to collect attorneys fees because of Lawyer’s failure to follow the statutory procedure for obtaining an attorneys fee judgment.

Business Owner sued employee for breach of non-competition agreement. Firm advised the business owner that they had no exposure to a judgment against them for attorneys fees because they were pursuing tort claims not a breach of contract claim, under which the winning side may seek repayment of legal fees. However, since both parties sought attorneys fees against the other and the owner’s lawyer originally filed both breach of contract and tort claims and since the tort claim itself grew out of a contract, the advice was faulty.

Founders of a Limited Liability Company sold a minority interest in the entity to a purchaser, with whom disagreements developed, paralyzing some of the company’s activities. The law firm for the LLC and the Founders counseled them to create a new entity owned only by the Founders, transfer contracts and other assets of the old entity to the new entity and to pay funds of the old entity to and on behalf of the Founders, who brought an action against the law firm for their bad advice.

Law firm obtained a substantial judgment for the client but failed to have the Court’s Minute Entry Orders reduced to Judgment. In the five years between the client’s victory in the case and the ruling on the form of judgment to be entered, the judgment debtor went into bankruptcy and, although the law firm assured the client that they had an injunction which prevented the judgment debtor from transferring assets, the client was unable to collect his judgment and incurred attorneys fees in resisting the bankruptcy.

Litigators in a large firm represented a client who was to receive a Note and a security interest in a Limited Liability Company in settlement. None of the litigators had transactional experience with LLC’s, yet they drafted an agreement which the lawyers told the client would enable the client to take over the management of the company if the debtor defaulted on the payments. The lawyers failed to understand that the only interest in the LLC that they had secured for their client was an interest in its revenues; therefore, the debtor was able to control the revenues by restricting the payment of profits and transferring interests in the LLC to others. The lawyers had failed to provide in the settlement agreement that their client could become a member of the LLC, failed to have the appropriate party sign the security agreement, failed to prevent the debtor from diluting his interest in the LLC by transferring interests to others and failed to suggest that the client obtain title insurance, which would have uncovered the deficiencies in the settlement as drafted.

Law firm represented all three original owners of a Limited Liability Company although there were serious conflicts of interest among them. The firm’s advice caused one of the owners to incur a judgment for his participation in what was bad legal advice to take control of assets that belonged to others.

Real Estate LLC sold property to its Manager but kept a security interest in the property. The former manager immediately borrowed funds from the Bank but when he defaulted the Bank took the position that he had signed the Note on behalf of the LLC, the original owner. The bank contended that owner’s guaranty of new, later loan was also a guaranty of the manager’s loan. Their counsel used as evidence a copy of the Guaranty with whited out identification numbers which tied the new guaranty only to the new loan. After LLC and Owner won the Bank’s suit against them and obtained a judgment for substantial attorneysfees they sued the Bank and the Bank’s attorneys for wrongfully pursuing them on the Manager’s loan.

Client retained law firm to draft a contract, the outlines of which were contained in a previous Settlement Agreement. Counsel followed the requirements of the Settlement Agreement but when the adverse lawyer, in his draft, removed important limiting language, counsel did not object and did not advise the client that the final draft of the contract might, therefore, require the client to pay substantially more than they had anticipated under the Settlement Agreement because the limiting language counsel had inserted in the draft had been deliberately removed by the other party’s lawyer without objection.

Lawyer retained expressly to “Review Purchase agreement [of a franchise operation] and due diligence research and advise on the meaning of the contract, recommend changes and bargaining strategies.” Although it is not typical for a lawyer to perform “due diligence research,” it was an appropriate assignment because English was not the clients’ first language. Lawyer’s minimal research turned up highly negative comments: recommendations and other information easily available on the internet suggesting that purchase of the franchise was unsound and dangerous. Lawyer failed to caution his clients and failed to note the oppressive terms of the Franchise Agreement he permitted his clients to sign.

Client made a substantial offer of settlement, which the other party rejected. When the other party won the case but received a judgment that was lower than what the Client had offered, the client’s lawyer advised that, as a result of turning down the offer, the other party was prevented from collecting its attorneys fees that were incurred after the Client had made the settlement offer and that the other party would be responsible to the Client for the fees the Client had incurred. The lawyer, however, failed to recognize that the case was governed by the law of a different jurisdiction and, in that jurisdiction, the Client’s failure to present the offer by a formal Offer of Judgment prevented the Client from proving that they had made a higher offer.

Trial lawyer, handling her own case against insurance company for bad faith, retained another trial lawyer who claimed to have expertise in bad faith cases, to try the case and to attempt to get the case settled and not risk a judgment against the client for attorneys fees if the case were lost. The lawyer made a demand to the insurance company for more than his client had approved. Insurance company made a lower but substantial offer by email with a short period for client to accept it. The offer was an amount the client would have accepted if the cleint had known about it. When the insurance company did not hear from the lawyer by the deadline, they withdrew the offer. The case was tried and resulted in a judgment for the insurer together with substantial attorneys fees. The lawyer, thereafter, advised his client that he had in fact received the offer before trial but claimed that the email had gone into his spam folder, which he had not reviewed.

Plaintiff’s expert testified that it was a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct for the lawyer to have acted as both attorney-in-fact and attorney-at-law, accordingly, lawyer, who was both, should not, according to Plaintiff’s expert,  be paid even quantum meruit for service performed.
Provided an opinion that, contrary to Plaintiff’s expert’s opinion, there is nothing wrong with one who is already the attorney for a client suggesting that the client execute a power of attorney making the lawyer the client’s attorney-in-fact.

Commercial tenant retained lawyer to negotiate a decreased rent on lease renewal. Old Lease had expired and Tenant was paying month-to-month at old rental rate. Lawyer and Owner exchanged emails establishing the new rent; Owner sent new Amended Lease but immediately “recalled” it claiming it was the “wrong version.” Lawyer, over a one year period, neither insisted on a formal Amendment from Landlord nor instructed Client to begin paying Landlord at the new agreed rent in order to establish an estoppel which could prevent the Landlord from terminating the tenancy. One year after the email rent agreement building’s purchaser did terminate client’s tenancy. In the Tenant’s litigation against the Landlord, Lawyer for Tenant took the position that, although the parties had not renewed the old lease, the emails demonstrating the agreement to the new rent constituted a new Lease because of the hardship on Tenant.

Firm seeking under $2,400 in fees owed by a former client, spent 8.1 hours drafting a complaint against the client at a cost of $2,430 and went on to spend over $12,000 in time pursuing the $2,400 claim. The jurisdiction limits fees to a reasonable amount of time at a reasonable hourly fee but no more than an amount suggested by “the significance of, or amount involved in, the subject matter of the representation.” Billing appeared to be “punitive” and exceeded the amount that another firm would have charged for collecting $2,400

Clients retained Counsel to pursue a legal malpractice case against clients’ first attorneys, who admittedly failed to prepare the contract and tort case properly and who had a conflict of interest in acting as counsel for both the clients and for the insurance company that was liable for the clients’ claim. Counsel, in the malpractice case failed to provide, in defence of a Motion for Summary Judgment, available testimony that the first attorneys’ conduct was the proximate cause of the clients’ loss. As a result the Court dismissed the legal malpractice case against the first attorneys.
Expert testimony was required to prove the case-within-a-case-within-a-case: Clients’ needed testimony that Counsel’s conduct fell below the standard of care, that he should have won the case against the first attorneys, that the first attorneys’ conduct fell below the standard of care and that the first attorneys should have won the original case the clients had brought against sellers of real property.

Attorney’s filing of a case in a jurisdiction that had no connection whatsoever with the breach of contract or tort, with the apparent intention to inconvenience the other litigant is both a violation of Rules of Professional Conduct and constitutes actionable misconduct.