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Fee Contracts: Failure to Include Language Costs Millions
The saga of a Texas product liability law firm can serve as a lesson to other firms in Texas, and perhaps, throughout the nation. In September, an arbitration panel ordered John M. O'Quinn's firm to pay a class of 3,450 former breast implant clients nearly $42 million because the fee contracts did not include language permitting the firm to charge for general expenses.
The suit, Martha Wood, et al. v. John M. O'Quinn, P.C., was filed in 1999 in state district court in Rusk County, TX. It went to arbitration because of a clause in the fee agreements. In their petition, the plaintiffs alleged that O'Quinn's firm wrongfully deducted Breast Implant General Expenses ' expenses such as the costs of taking depositions that were relevant to all the suits ' and other fees from their settlement checks.
In March, a majority of the three-member panel found that the fee agreements between O'Quinn's firm and the class members did not allow for the deduction of general breast implant expenses, certain expenses charged to the class members were inappropriate, and the firm's actions were not authorized by the fee agreements.
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