BROWNSVILLE, Texas (Legal Newsline) — Two Texas attorneys are claiming a law firm with which they had a joint representation agreement for U.S. Marines in the 1983 Beirut bombing illegally tried to fire them.
Brandon Roy and Christopher Gabel filed a complaint Aug. 24 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas against The Fay Law Group PA, Caragh Fay and Thomas Fortune Fay, alleging breach of contract and other claims.
Roy and Gabel, according to their complaint, are practicing attorneys in Harris County. The plaintiffs claim that they, along with the defendants, represented more than 200 U.S armed service members and their families against the Islamic Republic of Iran after the October 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, Lebanon.
The plaintiffs further claim that they were first retained by the clients and later agreed to a joint venture with the defendants and that many clients signed a second retainer agreement that added the defendants. They allege that in September of 2022, the defendants attempted to "cut" them out of the client representations by "purporting to 'fire'" them from their own clients.
The plaintiffs also allege the defendants wrote to those clients and falsely stated that the plaintiffs were no longer representing the clients. They claim they spent thousands of legal hours on the cases and never failed to represent the clients, which the defendant's falsely claimed in a "termination notice."
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas case number 4:23-CV-03139