Shaheen & Gordon squabbles with two other firms over attorneys fees in YDC abuse cases
Published: 12-27-2024 10:23 AM |
A prominent Concord law firm is locked in a legal dispute with two other firms over how profits earned through the lucrative representation of Youth Development Center victims should be dispersed.
The two firms are accusing Shaheen & Gordon of improperly withholding payments that should be divided, according to a lawsuit filed in October.
Thirty-five people who say they experienced abuse while being held in state-run youth detention facilities as children retained the Concord-based firm after previously being represented by the firms Rilee & Associates and Nixon Peabody.
Those firms argue they are owed a portion of any recovery for the services they provided before the clients swapped lawyers.
Lawyers for Shaheen & Gordon – which was co-founded by Bill Shaheen, the husband of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen – disagree. They say that their two predecessors did not complete meaningful work, that their clients fired them for cause, and that representation agreements signed don’t entitle them to a portion of any subsequent recovery because no settlement offers had been made before they switched firms, according to a response filed in November.
Shaheen & Gordon has counter-sued Rilee & Associates – a small Bedford-based firm that spearheaded a flood of legal claims against the state starting in 2020 – and Nixon Peabody – a prominent international law firm headquartered in Boston that was brought in to assist with the influx of cases – alleging that the two firms defamed Shaheen & Gordon, among other counterclaims.
The legal dispute, which was first reported by the Union Leader earlier this week, provides new details about how the three law firms have angled to benefit from what promises to be hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to more than 1,000 abuse victims who have sued the state so far.
The court filings also peel back the curtain on divergent legal strategies.
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Lawyers from Shaheen & Gordon have encouraged their clients to pursue recovery via a settlement fund established to streamline the cases’ resolution, while attorneys at Rilee & Associates and Nixon Peabody have criticized the payouts as insufficiently low and not encompassing of all forms of abuse experienced. They have advocated for their clients to continue litigating their cases, according to a filing by Shaheen & Gordon.
When the first payout via the settlement fund went to a Shaheen & Gordon client in February 2023, attorneys Rus Rilee of Rilee & Associates and David Vicinanzo of Nixon Peabody characterized the payment as “a cents on the dollar sell-out,” in a statement that Shaheen & Gordon now argues is defamatory. The amount of that payment has not been publicly disclosed.
Attorneys for Rilee & Associates and Nixon Peabody contend in their complaint that they worked closely with the state to create the settlement fund but believed it to “have significant flaws.”
According to an affidavit filed in a separate case, when one of their clients expressed that he wished to pursue the settlement fund process anyway, Rilee responded something to the effect of: “So they can throw $30,000 at you to get you out of their [expletive] face? You won’t get the kind of money you’ll get with me. I’m not gonna let a minnow slide through the net and [expletive] up a big case for me.”
Lawyers for Shaheen & Gordon wrote that their 35 clients who were previously represented by Rilee & Associates and Nixon Peabody left those firms partially because they “outright refused their clients’ direction to participate in the YDC Fund process.”
“Rilee’s and Nixon’s attempts to undermine the YDC Fund and corral their clients into years of in court litigation were not motivated by protecting their clients’ interest,” they wrote in a filing. “Rather they were motivated by greed, and with unfortunate results.”
Lawyers for Shaheen & Gordon argue that liens placed on their clients’ recovery are not valid because Rilee & Associates and Nixon Peabody were fired for cause. They also point to representation agreements that entitle the former firms to 40% of “the last settlement ‘offer’”, but they say that no settlements had been offered when the clients jumped ship.
It is unclear how many of the 35 clients have reached settlements with the state. Rilee & Associates and Nixon Peabody asked a court to require that Shaheen & Gordon set aside $1 million while the case progresses.
Overall, 676 claims have been filed via the settlement fund, 206 of which have resulted in settlements totaling $102 million, according to the most recent quarterly report available, which is from October.
Lawyers are eligible to receive up to one-third of their clients’ settlements reached via the fund.
Former YDC residents have until June 30, 2025 to submit their claims.
Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.