Former PI Colleagues Now Battling in Buffalo
A rancorous split of a small Buffalo, N.Y., personal injury firm has pitted three trial attorneys against the boss, and it isn’t yet clear who will prevail when the dust settles.
The three, who recently left to form their own firm, say they did so because of excessive work piled on them by William Mattar. A well-known local personal injury attorney, he spends an estimated $2 million annually on advertising but has never tried a personal injury case, reports the Buffalo News in an Oct. 25 article that can be found by searching the newspaper’s archives.
But Mattar contends the three took advantage of the opportunity he offered them by conspiring to steal his clients, the New York newspaper reports today in a follow-up article.
Each side accuses the other of making unduly aggressive efforts to hang onto clients that they claim as their own.
So far, Dean P. Smith, Joseph R. Bergen and Todd M. Schiffmacher have lured away 106 of his 775 clients since departing in October to set up their own law shop, according to Mattar, who says he is considering legal action.
His three former trial attorneys, on their side, complain of an allegedly punitive workload imposed in a manner that didn’t respect their professionalism. A series of memos, starting in January, reminded them of a minimum quota of two cases they should settle each week, and encouraged them to make three settlement demands to insurance companies weekly, whether or not the cases had been fully prepared, they tell the newspaper.
“In 17 years as an attorney,” says Smith, “nobody ever told me you have to settle a particular number of cases.”
It appears that there may be some merit to their complaints of a heavy workload—Mattar tells the newspaper that he has had to bring in six attorneys to handle the matters they left behind. And he doesn’t contest their claims of what he describes as an aspirational quota of two to three cases that should be settled per week.
“The goal of this office,” Mattar says, “is to get the best possible results for our clients in the shortest amount of time so that cases do not linger.”
