WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - The law firm Keller Postman, accused of filing frivolous arbitration claims against Fox Broadcasting’s Tubi unit, has fired back with a demand that Tubi’s lawyers at Jenner & Block be disqualified for contacting some its clients.
Jenner & Block partner Brandon Fox hired a former FBI agent to question people who had withdrawn their arbitration complaints against Tubi, Keller Postman says, a clear violation of California ethics rules. Keller Postman described the meetings as physical confrontations intended “to confuse, harass, intimidate and deceive” Keller Postman clients.
Jenner & Block was seeking evidence that Keller Postman hid fraudulent claims among thousands of arbitration demands in order to extort a $71 million settlement. Keller Postman used Instagram ads, YouTube videos and other advertising to recruit nearly 24,000 clients who filed arbitration demands against Tubi for offering targeted ads based on their age, sex and other demographic data, Tubi said.
Fox hired a former FBI agent named Stephanie Talamantez to call on Keller Postman clients at their homes and allegedly pressure them to sign sworn declarations that “described confidential communications and contradicted earlier declarations.” Talamantez “refused to leave after being asked to and instead hounded them,” Keller Postman said, and didn’t always identify herself as working for Tubi.
This behavior violated California Rule of Professional Conduct 4.2, which prohibits lawyers from communicating with another attorney’s clients, Keller Postman said. Fox responded he was only contacting people who had withdrawn their arbitration claims, but Keller Postman said the rule applies even after a case has been withdrawn.
“This flagrant abuse of represented lay parties by an adversary’s attorney is sanctionable in any court in the country,” the law firm said.
Other defense lawyers have reached out to Keller Postman to make sure they weren’t about to contact clients who were still represented by the firm. “To Keller Postman’s knowledge, after litigating dozens of mass arbitrations on behalf of hundreds of thousands of claimants, Jenner is the first law firm and Mr. Fox is the first lawyer to ever unilaterally contact withdrawn claimants,” Keller Postman said.
Keller Postman has advised its thousands of clients to challenge the enforceability a 45-day delay it included in its arbitration clause. The sides are currently choosing an arbitrator who will decided whether its enforceable.
The firm’s alleged business strategy is to swamp companies with mass arbitration so they will pay a quick settlement instead of $2,000 or more per claimant in arbitration fees – in Tubi’s case, some $48 million.
Keller Postman boasts on its website that its clients “turn the arbitration game against the companies that harm them,” using “the latest technology to pursue thousands of arbitration claims all at once.”
Tubi accused Keller Postman of deliberately neglecting to collect basic information from its clients, however. A third of the claims have emails that don’t correspond to any Tubi customers, the company said, 11% never received streaming ads and many others claim they received service in states where Tubi doesn’t operate. Keller Postman said Tubi has since acknowledged in another case that it may have failed to identify some customers because they were in a different database.
Tubi also accused Keller Postman of violating ethics rules by advising its clients to ignore a contractual requirement to provide basic information before filing arbitration claims.