Shutts & Bowen logo in Miami office.Miami law firm Shutts & Bowen is under fire from a former partner, who alleges he was defamed and deprived of a raise after reporting that a colleague was neglecting a client’s case.
The lawsuit filed by Christopher Prusaski in Miami-Dade Circuit Court accuses Shutts & Bowen and two employees of civil conspiracy, and defamation or defamation per se, and claims the firm has a history of overbilling clients.
Shutts & Bowen said Prusaski resigned from the firm March 17, but Prusaski’s attorney countered Monday that he was forced to leave.
Prusaski joined Shutts & Bowen in 2005 and became a non-equity partner in 2007, according to the complaint, which says he’s seeking more than $5 million in damages.
Shutts & Bowen moved to seal the complaint indefinitely March 18, arguing it contains confidential information that will damage the law firm and its clients. The Daily Business Review obtained a copy of the complaint March 17 from Prusaski’s attorney, Elizabeth Beck, who is handling the case with Jared Beck of Beck & Lee.
Shutts & Bowen said it is moving to compel arbitration with Prusaski. That filing has yet to appear on the docket.
“This complaint is sealed and a notice of confidentiality has been filed. It is our position that this complaint improperly discloses attorney client confidences and other confidential information and is subject to a confidential arbitration agreement designed to preserve client and firm confidentiality,” the firm said in an emailed statement. The firm also called Prusaski’s claims meritless.
Akerman attorneys David Ackerman and Jessica Rosenthal in West Palm Beach are representing Shutts & Bowen.
Prusaski, a complex commercial litigator, claims office relations soured after allegedly noticing that another partner at the firm was unprepared weeks before a 2019 trial. That partner was handling the litigation and recruited Prusaski in 2016, according to the complaint, which said there were a total of 34 lawyers billing the client, whose name is redacted.
Prusaski claimed he told the co-chair of the business litigation practice group, who told him to go to another person at the law firm. Then, with the trial just days away, the lawsuit alleges the partner Prusaski was working with became “irate” when Prusaski said he was too busy to prepare pre-trial motions or deposition designations.
The suit claims Prusaski did pitch in when asked to, then asked to be removed from the case because “it became clear that [the partner] would not prepare for trial and would attempt to throw plaintiff under the bus for any shortcomings in the case or missed deadlines.”
Prusaski alleges he was punished for that at his annual partner contract review, where Prusaski claims he was told “a lot of people are pissed off at you” and learned that his raise and bonus weren’t happening. The two other colleagues complained that Prusaski abandoned the client, according to the complaint, which said he was never asked to explain.
The plaintiff claims he received nothing in writing about the complaints or punishment, even though client abandonment is “one of the worst things an attorney can be accused of,” punishable by suspension or disbarment. The complaint notes that no one reported Prusaski to the bar for abandoning a client.
The lawsuit also alleges Shutts & Bowen wrongly dismissed Prusaski’s hours billed for another client, suggesting they were “inflated or not real.” But Prusaski claims the firm has “enabled and condoned flagrant, outrageous billing abuses” by the original partner on that case, whose name is redacted.
Prusaski alleges it’s widely known that the attorney makes almost $1 million from billing about 3,000 hours a year “based on wildly exaggerated time records—despite rarely coming into the office,” while another partner allegedly “purported to bill 42 hours on a single day in March 2019.”
The complaint claims Prusaski’s work on mass personal injury protection, or PIP, cases was frowned upon, despite being a major cash cow.
“While Shutts has collected tens of millions of dollars representing in these county court cases, many partners at Shutts still, to this day, deride this work and the attorneys who perform it, claiming that the work is not ‘real’ litigation worthy of the firm,” the complaint said.
Shutts & Bowen has more than 300 lawyers at eight Florida offices, which cover more than 30 different practice areas. The law firm and the individual defendants have not yet formally responded to the lawsuit.
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Former Partner Accuses Shutts & Bowen and 2 Colleagues of Defamation, Civil Conspiracy | Daily Business Review - Law.com
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