Fort Lauderdale appellate lawyer Bruce Rogow has represented feuding ex-partners more than once. Partings among members of Palm Beach County's plaintiffs bar, he says, have never been sweet. "You don't want to cross them."
Part of the problem is that West Palm Beach is thick with talented plaintiffs lawyers who aren't afraid to sue anybody, not even each other. You can hardly throw a rock in downtown West Palm Beach without hitting one of the big guns of the trial bar -- though you'd have to be crazy to try it.
Lawyers like Bob Montgomery, Christian Searcy and Lake Lytal -- who once all practiced together -- have put down roots here, building three of the state's most successful plaintiffs firms. Many of their proteges and ex-partners run competing practices barely out of each other's shadows.
Breaking up
Some partnerships break up quietly. Others rival society divorces. Montgomery and ex-partner Chris Larmoyeux have been arguing over $210 million in fees from the tobacco case for three years. Last year, an arbitration panel concluded that Larmoyeux was entitled to only $250,000, but the two are still sparring in court documents over the details.
And more than a decade since he split his practice from the firm he founded after a bitter feud with Searcy over money and management, Montgomery still ices over at the mention of Searcy's name.
More recently, a defector from Lytal Reiter Clark Fountain & Williams accused his former partners of taking more than their fair share from the firm's profits and sued. Firm founders Lake Lytal and Joseph Reiter argue that lawyer Rafael Roca has no claim to any share of the firm's earnings because he'd voluntarily signed an agreement withdrawing from the partnership and quit before a new agreement was in place.
Roca argues that the withdrawal agreement didn't change his status as partner. It was intended only to position the firm under a new partnership agreement excluding another partner who was leaving after a feud over terms under which junior partners would share in profits. The partner, Tracy Sharpe, also sued, settling in 1998 for an undisclosed amount.
Although the remaining partners agreed to the withdrawal, the terms of a reformed partnership were still not committed to writing when Roca quit in February 1998.
Nevertheless, Roca argued that he remained a partner in every sense until he left. He was paid a share of firm profits, he signed on to the firm's credit line and he was presented as a partner on firm stationery and in a letter to the Florida Supreme Court recommending him for a committee appointment.
Lytal and Reiter don't dispute that Roca was held out as a partner but said that was only to spare him and the other junior partners from embarrassment until a new, written agreement was in place.
The jury sided with Roca. Palm Beach Circuit Judge John Wessel did not. He set aside the jury's decision and entered a verdict for the firm. Now, more than two years later, the 4th District Court of Appeal has given Roca back his win.
Rogow, who represented the firm in the appeal, says, "the lesson it teaches is 'be very careful in your relationships with your co-lawyers.' "
Unless the two sides can reach a settlement, the case will go back to the circuit court to determine how much Roca is owed. "I can assure you it will be several millions of dollars," says Boca Raton lawyer Steven Katzman, who along with appellate lawyer Philip Burlington of West Palm Beach represents Roca.