Jury Rules Lawyer Must Return Half of $200K Bonus Paid by Client
Updated: A Philadelphia jury has ruled a lawyer who helped a client negotiate a $4.9 million post-nuptial settlement must repay half of a $200,000 bonus she paid him.
The jury ruled lawyer Charles Shainberg breached his contract with the client, Junko Schubert, when he sought payment of the bonus, the Legal Intelligencer reports. The jury found for Shainberg on a separate breach of fiduciary duty claim and found for his law firm, Shainberg & Viola, on both claims.
The bonus was never mentioned in the original fee agreement, according to testimony by the plaintiff’s expert, Temple University law professor Louis Natali Jr. He said the $200,000 bonus was excessive, an assertion disputed by the defense expert, University of Pennsylvania law professor Geoffrey Hazard Jr., the story says.
Schubert and Shainberg had differed over the circumstances surrounding the bonus payment, according to the story’s description of their legal positions filed in court papers.
Schubert had claimed Shainberg had called her to his office after he negotiated the agreement, where he presented her with a letter indicating the firm believed a bonus was appropriate. She said Shainberg urged her to fill in a blank line for the bonus, saying he had promised a $200,000 bonus to the people working for him. She also claimed he told her she could not receive a $1.05 million distribution under the agreement without signing the bonus letter. Schubert filled in $200,000 as the amount.
Shainberg had said in court filings that the letter was sent in the mail and no pressure was exerted on Schubert to pay a bonus.
Schubert tells the ABA Journal she had instructed Shainberg to drop the divorce when she learned her husband was seriously ill, but he didn’t follow through as instructed. She thought she was paying Shainberg to pursue an estate matter.
“I took Shainberg to the court ONLY to set the record straight,” Schubert tells the ABA Journal in an email. “What hurts me the most is, my husband had to die thinking that I did not love him anymore.”
Updated on Jan. 4, 2012, to include comments from Schubert.
