http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/191774.html
Quoting since Buffalo News removes articles after a week.
Mattar’s 3 trial lawyers quit
Attorneys cite heavy pressure by head of firm to settle cases, role of call center in Tennessee
By Michael Beebe
Updated: 10/25/07 6:45 AM
William K. Mattar, the attorney who blankets local airwaves with his ads — “Hurt in a Car, Call William Mattar” — lost his trial lawyers last week after they quit over what they said was Mattar’s pressuring them to settle cases.
The three lawyers who left said that in recent months, Mattar stopped having them screen callers for legitimate claims when they call Mattar’s 24-hour hotline.
Instead, they said, those calls are answered by a call center in Tennessee affiliated with the advertising agency that produces Mattar’s television spots.
The result has been a staggering rise in the number of cases assigned to each attorney — more than 200 apiece, a more than 40 percent increase. It came with increased pressure from Mattar to settle a minimum of two to three cases a week each, the former Mattar lawyers said in an interview.
“In 17 years as an attorney,” said Dean P. Smith, one of those who left, “nobody ever told me you have to settle a particular number of cases.”
“It’s like taking a pot roast out of the oven before it’s ready,” Smith said. “It’s either done or it’s not.”
Smith and fellow Mattar attorneys Joseph R. Bergen and Todd M. Schiffmacher have formed their own personal-injury law firm.
Mattar, asked for his side of the dispute, had his lawyer, Ralph L. Halpern of Jaeckle, Fleischmann & Mugel, respond.
Halpern described the three defectors as disgruntled lawyers trying to drum up business for their new firm. He said they have called Mattar’s clients and falsely told them Mattar was either retiring or moving to Florida.
“I think they’re looking for an excuse to steal clients,” Halpern said.
The former Mattar attorneys dispute that. They went to court Tuesday to stop Mattar from calling those clients who have decided to go with their firm, Smith, Bergen & Schiffmacher.
“They’ve been getting voice mails at 2 a.m., up to five messages a day from him,” Bergen said.
Courts in recent disputes between personal-injury lawyers have allowed clients to go with the lawyer they choose. State Supreme Court Justice Gerald G. Whalen, who is hearing this dispute, is expected to eventually decide what, if any, payment should be awarded to Mattar for those clients who leave.
Heavy advertising
Mattar, 43, is a Syracuse University Law School graduate who has built a substantial auto-injury practice through the estimated $2 million he spends each year on ads produced by CJ Advertising in Nashville, Tenn.
Mattar is the center of those ads, which use actors posing as potential clients asking him questions about various aspects of the law. The same actors also are featured in other ads produced by the firm.
Mattar has always shown an appreciation for the advantages advertising can have in recruiting clients. In the early 1990s, according to records in the Erie County clerk’s office, he registered business names of AAA Able Law Office of William K. Mattar as well as A Able Law Office of William K. Mattar. The names allowed him to be first among lawyers in phone book listings.
Mattar has been able to build up his auto-injury practice despite never having tried a personal-injury case. Mattar confirmed that, according to Bergen, and said he never took a deposition from a client in the nine years Bergen spent with the Mattar firm.
Bergen said that for a long time he was the only lawyer in the firm who tried cases, until Mattar hired Smith and Schiffmacher in September 2006. Before that, Bergen said, Mattar used a group of outside attorneys when a case didn’t settle and had to go to trial.
“Dean and I were brought in so he could stop farming out cases,” Schiffmacher said.
Memo sets weekly goals
Smith said that last January, Mattar sent each of the three lawyers a memo outlining 15 steps to improve the business.
“Two settlements a week,” read item No. 4 of the memo. “This is a minimum number.”
No. 13 read: “Staff Help: Advise your staff of the need to meet the specified goals and have them help you meet them.”
Smith said the three attorneys were bothered enough about the memo to ask for a meeting with Mattar.
“When we questioned him about the written memo, he repeated that this was a minimum, it was part of your employment,” Smith said. “In addition, we were expected to make two to three settlement demands a week [to insurance companies].”
“We were to make demands whether the case was ready or not,” Schiffmacher said.
“How do you say to an [insurance] adjuster a case is worth X dollars, when it’s not ready?” Smith said. “When it very well could be worth Y dollars.”
“The fact of the matter is,” he said, “we didn’t do it.”
Use of pressure denied
Halpern, Mattar’s attorney, denied that there was any pressure on the lawyers to settle cases. He said there were only suggested goals.
“Two a week doesn’t mean two a week,” Halpern said. “In a year, it averages out. Some weeks you settle one, none; next week you settle three or four.”
The three lawyers dispute that. They said there was no mistaking what Mattar wanted.
On July 27, they got another memo from Mattar.
This time, he wrote, each attorney needed to settle at least three cases a week. The attorney and his legal team who settled the most cases in a week would be treated to dinner, Mattar wrote.
The three lawyers said they ignored that memo, as well.
On Sept. 20, there was another Mattar memo.
“Please continue to focus on resolving matters,” Mattar wrote. “It is basically 2 cases a week. If you do not have two cases resolved this week or are missing cases from earlier this month, then make that the focus of your Friday and resolve some cases.”
‘Did I Reach My Goal?’
The three lawyers said Mattar expected a report from them each Friday on their settled cases.
“Each week, we’d have to submit a ‘Did I Reach My Goal?’ statement,” Schiffmacher said.
“Hell hath no fury like when we didn’t have that sheet on his desk by 4 pm. Friday,” Smith said. Mattar told the lawyers in another memo that they would have to come in on Saturday if they did not turn in the reports on Friday.
All three said they made the final decision to leave the firm after receiving a memo from Mattar’s office manager Oct. 1. They said that it had been dictated by Mattar, who was playing golf at the time in Las Vegas.
“WKM [William K. Mattar] asked that this message be sent to all attorneys as a REMINDER to settle more files this week,” the memo read.
“It made it next to impossible to practice law and serve our clients,” Smith said of the settlement pressures.
Halpern said Mattar did nothing that other law firms didn’t do all the time.
“All lawyers, law firms, they have billable hours,” Halpern said. “You have to have a target, a goal. There’s nothing inappropriate to that.”
