Lawyer Equitably Estopped From Claiming No Referral Fee Due.

A referring plaintiff’s firm referred a potential class action case to a lawyer who specializes in class actions. The specialty lawyer promised to pay the referring firm one-third of any legal fees recovered. The client consented in writing to the referral fee. The specialty lawyer selected a different class representative than the one referred by the referring lawyer, and “threatened that if [the referring lawyer] tried to notify the new class representatives of the fee-splitting agreement, [the specialty lawyer] would consider such action to be tortuous interference with defendants’ attorney-client relationship.”  The specialty lawyer settled the class action, which settlement included $13.5 million for attorney fees, and gave the referring lawyer nothing. During the trial of the case brought by the referring firm against the specialty lawyer, the specialty lawyer argued the promise to pay the referral fee was unenforceable under California Rules of Court rule 2-200, which permits an attorney to share legal fees with another lawyer only with the client’s informed written consent. The Court of Appeal held:  “In this case, we hold that an attorney may be equitably estopped from claiming that a fee-sharing contract is unenforceable due to noncompliance with rule 2-200 or rule 3.769, where that attorney is responsible for such noncompliance and has unfairly prevented another lawyer from complying with the rules’ mandates.” Barnes, Crosby, Fitzgerald & Zelman v. Jerome L. Ringler (Cal. App. Fourth Dist., Div. 3; December 19, 2012) (as Mod. January 16, 2013) (Case No. G045872).