Final week AmLaw 100 agency Polsinelli filed a federal lawsuit towards a former associate Louis Mastriani. At difficulty is a consumer contingency price of $1.5 million that the agency alleges Mastriani wrongly transformed.
Mastriani joined Polsinelli in 2022, from AMS Commerce. That agency, whereas now not working, was not dissolved as contingency charges beforehand earned had been nonetheless being paid. In 2023 a kind of purchasers moved its enterprise to Polsinelli, with the understanding the contingency charges would now be paid to the brand new agency.
As reported by Regulation.com, the grievance alleges that’s not the way in which it went down:
This 12 months, Mastriani led a good settlement settlement, and the consumer notified Mastriani that the whole lot of the cost could be acquired by June 5 and that $1.5 million could be awarded to Polsinelli. Nonetheless, Mastriani allegedly did not disclose the cost info to Polsinelli administration and as a substitute falsely informed the consumer that the cash was to go to AMS within the fall—quite than instantly to Polsinelli, the grievance mentioned.
And why did he allegedly do this? The grievance says, “Mastriani’s purported justification for this request was that ‘there’s a sturdy chance that I could also be becoming a member of a brand new agency in a few months. If I do, the cost could be made to that agency, which I’ll then move to me and my outdated agency [AMS].’”
However the consumer refused this monetary association and the price was paid to Polsinelli. At that time it’s alleged Mastriani represented the charges as from prior work, and directed non-attorney workers members “to ‘course of and switch the funds to our AMS Commerce account as you may have performed up to now.’”
Just a few weeks after this, Mastriani introduced he was leaving Polsinelli and becoming a member of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney.
Mastriani has a really completely different take, naturally, and says the lawsuit “is the end result of a marketing campaign of ongoing vindictive retaliation in response to my departure from the agency, a departure prompted largely by the greed and deceit of administration.”
“The grievance and its supporting declaration are riddled with false statements, inaccuracies, and omissions of fabric reality, all of that are supposed to realize funds from my former agency and me, to which Polsinelli has no authorized or equitable entitlement,” Mastriani continued. “If Polsinelli needs to air its baseless claims and soiled laundry in a public discussion board, then so be it, by which case I’ll vigorously defend and assert my very own reliable claims.”
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Regulation, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the most effective, so please join along with her. Be at liberty to electronic mail her with any ideas, questions, or feedback and comply with her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].
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