Steve Schulman, a former top Milberg Weiss partner who agreed to plead guilty to racketeering charges in September, has sued his former firm for nonpayment of his criminal defense attorneys’ fees. The complaint is here.
Schulman seeks an injunction that would force the class-action law firm — which is still defending its own indictment on related charges — to continue to pay the attorneys’ fees Schulman is incurring while cooperating with the government against the firm and its founder, Mel Weiss. The firm and Weiss have pleaded not guilty.
Schulman has also sued the law firm of Coughlin, Stoia, Geller, Rudman & Robbins (formerly Lerach Coughlin, etc.), the spin-off firm formed by former Milberg partner Bill Lerach in May 2004. Bill Lerach agreed to plead guilty in September in a deal in which the government agreed not to prosecute Coughlin Stoia or its top partner Patrick J. Coughlin.
Schulman says that until September, Milberg Weiss and Coughlin Stoia had been splitting his defense costs 50/50.
Until 2004, Milberg Weiss was the leading class-action plaintiffs firm in the nation; Coughlin Stoia is still one of the leaders today.
“Acting maliciously and in flagrant bad faith,” the complaint asserts, the two law firms “have wrongfully stopped paying petitioner’s legal fees in retaliation for his agreement to plead guilty and cooperate with the Government in its ongoing investigation and prosecution of Milberg Weiss and its founding partner, Melvyn I. Weiss.”
Schulman characterizes his former partners as attempting to “punish” him “for agreeing to cooperate with the government,” and calls the effort “a gross violation of public policy and a flagrant breach of . . . contractual obligations.”
Milberg Weiss partner Sanford Dumaine said he could not comment, but would be filing papers responding later this afternoon. Dan Newman, a spokesman for Coughlin Stoia, did not immediately return a voicemail seeking comment. I’ll post his comment when received. (In the meantime, I’ll note that the law firms very likely will have some nontrivial arguments on their side for not reimbursing Schulman once he acknowledged criminal wrongdoing. Contracts to reimburse people for costs incurred in connection with criminal acts are often void as against public policy.)
Schulman claims that without the firms’ subsidization of his fees, he faces “imminent risk of being deprived of his constitutional right to criminal counsel of his choice guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment.”
Under Milberg Weiss’s 1991 partnership agreement the firm agreed to reimburse partners for attorneys’ fees “for which a partner becomes liable in connection with the rendition of services to a client,” according to the complaint.
When Bill Lerach split away in May 2004 and formed Lerach Coughlin, the complaint continues, the two firms entered into a “joint defense agreement” and agreed to “retain joint counsel in connection with the pending grand jury investigation.”
Then on May 11, 2006 — seven days before Schulman was indicted — Schulman signed a “leave of absence agreement” with Milberg Weiss in which that firm specifically committed to reimburse him for legal fees “even in the event [Schulman] were to be convicted of a felony, until such time as such conviction has been upheld by a final non-appealable court order.” Schulman says he bargained for this valuable clause, and in exchange passed up the opportunity to share in fee awards from pending Tyco (TYC), Nortel (NT), Sears, and Enron class actions.
From May 2006 until September 2007, Schulman says, Milberg Weiss and Coughlin Stoia had split the costs of his civil and criminal attorneys fees 50/50, paying about $4.5 million to his defense lawyers at Stern & Kilcullen and McDermott Will & Emery.
Schulman agreed to plead guilty on September 20, 2007, the same day that Milberg Weiss co-founder Mel Weiss was indicted. But upon agreeing to plead guilty, he says, both firms stopped paying his fees.
Though Schulman did plead guilty on October 9, he contends that he is still entitled to payment under his Leave of Absence Agreement, since has not yet been formally “convicted.” That event will not occur until his sentencing, which is currently scheduled for June 23, 2008, he argues. He has already run up about $1.2 million in unreimbursed fees since September, according to his complaint.
Schulman filed the suit in state supreme court in Manhattan on November 27. Though Schulman has already initiated arbitration proceedings against Milberg Weiss and, the complaint says, will soon do so against Coughlin Stoia, Schulman has gone to court to seek an emergency order that the firm keeping paying his fees while the arbitrations are pending.
In passing, Schulman notes that as a partner at Milberg Weiss he earned $15 million in 2005. He says his equity share that year was 15.5 percent, which was third behind founder Mel Weiss (17 percent) and David J. Bershad (16 percent). Bershad was the first Milberg Weiss partner to agree to plead guilty.
