PHILADELPHIA (Legal Newsline) - Saying a claimed “emergency” might be more of a delaying tactic, the judge overseeing a lawsuit by a disgruntled former client of the law firm Hagens Berman rejected a request to halt the proceedings while the firm appeals his ruling denying a venue change out of his court.
“The sky has not fallen,” wrote U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond over the prominent Seattle law firm’s argument it needs more time to fight his order rejecting a transfer of the lawsuit to Texas. “Hagens Berman has not alleged any harm beyond the mere fact that the litigation will continue in this Court while the Firm petitions for mandamus.”
This is the second time Hagens Berman has tried to halt actions by Judge Diamond in litigation swirling around its ill-fated decision to represent people who claimed they were injured by Thalidomide. The drug was briefly on the market in the early 1960s until it was linked to severe birth defects in children whose mothers took it to prevent morning sickness.
The lawsuits collapsed after defendants obtained information showing the plaintiffs knew or should have known decades earlier that the drug was the cause of their deformities.
Judge Diamond ordered the firm to pay $145,000 in sanctions in 2015 over its behavior, which the law firm is still fighting. Hagens Berman ultimately dismissed many of the suits against lead defendant GlaxoSmithKline in what a special master described as a “suspicious” arrangement under which Glaxo also dropped its request for sanctions. Then in a further development, the law firm informed the court one of its lawyers had falsified a medical expert’s report to convince a client to drop her claims.
The revelations led onetime client Carolyn Sampson to sue the law firm earlier this year, accusing it of putting “the protection of its own financial, publicity, and reputational interests before those of the clients they recruited into a lawsuit without a fair disclosure of their chances of success.” She doesn’t formally allege legal malpractice, instead accusing the law firm of conspiracy and inflicting emotional and financial distress upon her.
Hagens Berman resisted discovery in the matter until Aug. 27, the plaintiff says, and now argues Sampson’s case should be transferred to Texas under a contract she signed a Dallas law firm that originally developed the idea of suing over Thalidomide more than 50 years after it was removed from the market. Sampson later signed a one-page agreement for Hagens Berman to take over her case.
The document says the terms of the contract with her former Dallas lawyers remain in effect, but Judge Diamond wrote it is questionable whether it can be enforced. The contract refers to her “Texas Attorney” but Hagens Berman doesn’t have an office there.
Hagens Berman cites a U.S. Supreme Court decision holding parties to a contract to their venue agreements, but the judge said that would only apply if Hagens Berman was a party to the contract it is seeking to enforce.
“In the absence of any evidence that might be revealed in discovery, it presently seems that the venue selection clause does not apply to Hagens Berman — which is plainly not the 'Texas Attorney' described in the Agreement,” he wrote.
Sampson lives in Minnesota. Hagens Berman argues Sampson’s claims hinge on promises her former lawyers made to her when they were practicing in Texas and she should have known the venue agreement committed her to litigating any subsequent disputes with her lawyers there.
Whatever urgency is Hagens Berman's own fault, Sampson’s lawyers argue. In a recent filing, the law firm complained it received 13,000 pages of documents from Sampson on Aug. 31.
“Of course, they forget that the reason that they did not get discovery sooner is that they refused to participate in the discovery process until ordered to do so by the Court,” her lawyers said.