SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (Legal Newsline) - A mother whose lawyers negotiated a $2.5 million settlement over the death of her son lost her bid to prevent lawyers hired by her grandchildren to get a piece of the fees after a Missouri appeals court ruled contingency-fee contracts awarding more than a third of the money to attorneys were valid.
Diane Lewis-Campbell agreed to the wrongful-death settlement with landowners Karl and Joseph Lambert after her son Johnathan Lewis died falling off a cliff on their property in June 2021. The money was to be split among Lewis-Campbell and her son’s three children, with the children receiving $750,000 each and Lewis-Campbell receiving $250,000.
Lewis-Campbell had a contingency-fee contract giving her lawyers 40% of any recovery. The mothers of her grandchildren hired a different lawyer for a 33.3% fee a month after the settlement was reached but Lewis-Campbell protested the district court’s award of fees, saying he was “a last-minute attorney benefiting handsomely from something he had no part in creating.”
Lewis-Campbell argued the children’s legal fees were “unreasonable” and should be reduced to $250,000 from $750,000, with Lewis-Campbell getting the $500,000 difference.
The Missouri Court of Appeals rejected her arguments in a Jan. 8 opinion by Judge Jennifer Growcock. Courts have no power to interfere in fee contracts under Missouri’s wrongful death statute unless the claimants are children with no attorneys for themselves, the appeals court ruled.
“Essentially, to reach Ms. Lewis-Campbell’s desired results, the trial court would need to reapportion the entire settlement among the claimants to reach new attorney’s fees amounts she deems appropriate for all attorneys involved,” the court said.
Lewis-Campbell argued the children had no lawyers at the time the settlement was negotiated. But the fee portion of the wrongful-death law applies only if children have no lawyer prior to the “rendition” of a judgment or settlement, meaning a court order, the appeals court said.
“While Decedent’s children did not retain counsel before Ms. Lewis-Campbell secured a proposed settlement, they did have legal representation before the trial court rendered the judgment by approving it,” the appeals court said.
Any other reading would lead to “absurd results,” where children who challenged a proposed settlement would have to pay the mother’s fees simply because she accepted the offer first, the court said.
“Given this absurd result and Ms. Lewis-Campbell’s failure to identify any authority adopting her interpretation of the statute, we reject it,” the appeals court concluded.