LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) - Class action lawyers who hit FedEx with a lawsuit over whether the company's drop boxes could be accessed by wheelchair-bound individuals are now fighting over nearly $1 million in fees.
Attorney J. Luke Sanderson of Wampler, Carroll, Wilson & Sanderson earlier this year sued the firm with which he thought he had negotiated a 50-50 split for fees generated by Americans with Disabilities lawsuits.
It was he who investigated FedEx drop boxes, the lawsuit said, and shared the information with Benjamin Sweet and Jonathan Miller of Nye, Stirling, Hale & Miller. Sweet heads the Nye firm's Pittsburgh office.
While he thought the complaint was being finalized, the Nye firm filed the case in Los Angeles federal court before he could be added to the lead plaintiff's retainer agreement, the suit says.
In July, Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett approved $900,000 in fees for the Nye firm in a settlement that requires FedEx to make its 34,000 drop boxes ADA-compliant. The estimated cost of that injunctive relief was $5.1 million, the Nye firm said, and the settlement also has the firm investigating 15% of FedEx's drop boxes over the following four years.
The idea originated with Sanderson, who passed it along to Sweet and Miller one month after they agreed to a 50-50 partnership, Sanderson's suit says. The work of analyzing the drop boxes was assigned to an investigator, it adds.
"Mr. Sweet told Plaintiff his investigator was making excellent progress and he thought the case against FedEx would be one of the largest cases monetary wise ever filed under Title III of the ADA," the suit says.
The Nye firm's original draft of the complaint, however, mistook the issue and complained that blind individuals could not access the drop boxes, Sanderson says, adding he pointed this mistake out - as well as the fact many paragraphs were repeated.
On Oct. 7, 2021, Sanderson sent an edited version of the complaint to Sweet, who had told Sanderson he would need to be added to the representation agreement of plaintiff Janne Kouri, the suit says.
Without that being done, and two days after Sanderson sent the edited version, the lawsuit was filed, Sanderson says.
"The improper filing of this complaint was done without Plaintiff's approval to create leverage to attempt to modify the co-counsel agreement," Sanderson claims.
Ultimately, plaintiff Kouri emailed Sanderson in February 2022 to terminate him from representing her, Sanderson says. The case settled more than a year later, leading to this new court battle.
Sanderson seeks at least half of the $900,000.