Firm sues former partner alleging theft of clients and diversion of funds
A firm that represents plaintiffs against corporations and accounting firms in cases of fraud and other misrepresentation has sued a former partner, alleging he schemed to steal clients and take money owed the firm when he left in April to launch his own, The National Law Journal (sub. req.) reports.
The Delaware-based firm Grant & Eisenhofer accused Reuben Guttman of “a surreptitious and deceptive campaign” in the suit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. last week. The suit claims Guttman persuaded the firm to hold off notifying clients until he finished depositions in a case, only to use the extra time to lure clients away.
It also alleges Guttman devised a scheme to take an undisclosed amount of money that was to be for the firm from two cases with whistleblower bounties. It said the firm spent $1.9 million in unreimbursed fees and expenses in one of them, a pharmaceutical case.
Grant & Eisenhofer had found itself on the other side of a similar matter in 2009 when it was sued by Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz. The firm claimed entitlement to $150,000 of a whistleblower settlement because its ex-partner, Guttman, drafted the complaint in the case before moving to Grant & Eisenhofer.
In the current case, Guttman and his new firm, Guttman, Buschner & Brooks, is represented by James Griffin of Lewis, Babcock & Griffin of Columbia, South Carolina. Griffin, whose co-counsel is Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor and former federal district judge. Griffin issued a statement saying his clients will “assert counterclaims that will publicly provide a full and vivid picture of Grant & Eisenhofer, its practices and the conduct of its principals, which led to the departure of these very successful and prominent attorneys.”
John Harris of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz of New York City is lead counsel for Grant & Eisenhofer and declined to comment to the NLJ.
The complaint also names two lawyers who left Grant & Eisenhofer to form a new firm with Guttman. It alleges that after Guttman left the firm, his now-partner Traci Buschner let him into the Grant & Eisenhofer offices at night to remove boxes of materials. It also accuses Guttman’s now-partner Justin Brooks of soliciting business for the new firm from other lawyers at the firm before leaving with Guttman.
