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A Novel Approach to Fee Collection

By Shannon P. Duffy

Lawyers whose clients refuse to pay their fees routinely file lawsuits and win judgments against them. Attorney Ellen Marshall's disputes with a former divorce client, however, have been anything but routine. Then again, Warren Matthei is no ordinary client. Matthei, a millionaire stockbroker from Summit, NJ, spent nearly a decade in jail ' first for refusing to pay child support to his ex-wife, and later for refusing to pay Marshall's attorney fees. Marshall obtained an $85,000 judgment against Matthei, but court records show she has all but given up on getting the money from him. Instead, in a separate lawsuit, Marshall is pursuing RICO claims against lawyers in Pennsylvania and London, England, who, she claims, have assisted Matthei in hiding his assets from her.

Now a federal judge has refused to dismiss the lawsuit in a scathing opinion that says 'this dispute exemplifies why there are reports of the public's disdain for lawyers.' In her 46-page opinion in Marshall v. Fenstermacher, U.S. District Judge Gene E.K. Pratter dismissed Marshall's federal RICO claims, but found that she may nonetheless have valid RICO claims under New Jersey law against attorney Ronald Fenstermacher and his firm, High Swartz Roberts & Seidel, in Norristown, PA, and British attorney David Burgess and his London law firm, Hetherington & Co. To understand Marshall's claims against the Norristown and London lawyers, one first needs to understand Marshall's long history with Matthei.

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