 Representative Cases
 Johnson, Trustee in Bankruptcy v. Osborne, Superior Court of Gwinnett County, Georgia
In this legal malpractice case, Greg Turner was sued by Mr. Timothy Woody, whose wife Kimberly died in a vehicular collision with Turner’s truck. Turner’s truck hydroplaned in a heavy rainstorm and went over the center line into oncoming traffic, striking the motorcycle ridden by Mrs. Woody.
Turner notified his insurance company of the collision, and the insurance company hired Mr. Osborne’s firm to defend him. It was undisputed that the only pre-trial contact between Mr. Turner and one of his lawyers was shortly after the lawsuit was filed, when he was told that the case would settle; the message was essentially, “don’t call us, we'll call you.”
Due to unrelated personal issues (he was going through a divorce), Turner moved during the time that Mr. Woody’s lawsuit was pending. Throughout the entire time, however, he stayed at the same job that he had had for many years. When Osborne took over the case, he did not contact Turner, his client. A few weeks before the case came up for trial, Osborne (without ever seeking or obtaining his client’s approval) stipulated that Turner was negligent. This meant that Mr. Woody and his lawyer were relieved of proving that Turner had done anything wrong to cause the collision. (Had he been asked, Mr. Turner would have explained to Osborne that he was not negligent and did not believe he had done anything wrong to cause the accident. He had just put new front tires on his truck, and he was not speeding. He was very familiar with the road.)
Turner did not attend the trial because Osborne never told him about it beforehand. Osborne spoke to Turner for the first and only time after the trial started. By then it was too late: the jury returned a verdict against Turner for $1,700,000. Osborne then gave Turner the only advice he gave him in the entire time he was supposed to be representing him: File bankruptcy. This was, unfortunately, all Turner could do, because he was unable to pay the $1.7 million judgment.
Mr. Turner’s bankruptcy trustee, Douglas Johnson, saw the unfairness of what had happened to Turner, and he contacted Jones, Jensen & Harris. We filed suit against Mr. Osborne, his firm, and Mr. Turner’s insurance company. The case was tried in Gwinnett County in August 2007, and at its conclusion the jury returned a verdict for $991,500 against Mr. Osborne and his firm. The jury specifically found that Greg Turner was not negligent and therefore was not liable for the death of Kimberly Woody. The jury further found that Osborne did breach the standard of care in his representation of Turner. The case settled for a confidential amount.
Television Cablecasting, Inc. v. Levine
In 2005, Ms. Jensen and Mr. Jones obtained a jury verdict for their clients of more than $315,000.00 against an attorney for abusive litigation. The award included the full amount of attorney's fees sought by plaintiffs, plus an additional $200,000.00 for mental anguish suffered by two individual plaintiffs. The trial in the State Court of Fulton County lasted two days, and the jury deliberated approximately four hours before rendering its verdict in favor of the plaintiffs.
The abusive litigation claim arose from the defendant attorney's lawsuit, filed in 1996, against Television Cablecasting, Inc. (TCI), in which the attorney claimed that he was owed attorney's fees by that entity. The sole shareholder of TCI (Susan) had been awarded the stock in the company in a divorce action in which Levine had represented, at various times, both TCI and her former husband. Because Levine had for a time represented TCI while the ex-husband (Cassidy) was its sole owner, he asserted that TCI owed him over $40,000.00. Jones, Jensen & Harris represented TCI in Levine’s original lawsuit and succeeded in defeating it on summary judgment in 2002. The decision was affirmed by the Court of Appeals in 2003, which held in Levine v. Television Cablecasting, Inc., 261 Ga. App. 128, 130-31 (2003), that:
Although Levine maintains that he represented TCI in the divorce action, the record shows that Levine's true client was Cassidy, who hired him to prevent [Susan] from getting TCI's main asset--the farm. . . . When [Susan] filed for divorce, seeking to recover the farm, Cassidy--who is a lawyer--represented himself, but he asked Levine to represent TCI because he (Cassidy) is not licensed to practice in Georgia. Before TCI was dismissed from the proceedings, Cassidy gave Levine one payment for legal services--a $1,250 check drawn not on a TCI account, but on Cassidy's attorney trust account. TCI was dismissed from the case only after Levine represented that it was an unnecessary party because Cassidy was its sole shareholder and the jury could award [Susan] the farm by giving her the stock of TCI. And after TCI's dismissal, Levine continued to represent Cassidy personally. The letter of engagement purporting to obligate TCI for Levine's legal services was not created until after the jury had awarded TCI's stock to [Susan], at which point Cassidy lacked authority to bind the corporation.
Thus, the relevant undisputed facts show that Levine worked to preserve the farm not for TCI, but for Cassidy. Because Levine was hired by Cassidy to act in Cassidy's interest, he must look to Cassidy for payment of his legal fees.
In addition, Levine had filed a lien in Illinois against Susan’s family farm, which had necessitated a lawsuit there to remove the lien. After losing the Illinois litigation, Levine filed a motion to add both Susan and her husband Michael as defendants in his Fulton County fee claim, as well as Suncoast Investments, a company owned by Michael, on the alleged grounds that Susan, as an officer of TCI, had fraudulently conveyed the farm to Suncoast. The motion to add those parties was denied in conjunction with the motion for summary judgment, as the court held that because there was no valid claim against TCI, there could have been no fraudulent conveyance. This ruling was also affirmed by the Court of Appeals.
After the Court of Appeals decision, TCI, Suncoast, Susan and Michael filed the abusive litigation claim, seeking attorneys' fees and mental anguish damages. The jury awarded the full amount (approximately $115,000.00) of attorney's fees sought by the plaintiffs, and also awarded $150,000.00 to Susan for mental anguish damages and $50,000.00 to Michael for mental anguish damages. The case was subsequently settled.
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