Suit claims Quinn Emanuel didn't comply with fee agreement
A lawsuit filed last week claims Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan overbilled for its defense of a home sales executive who pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit bank fraud.
The suit (PDF) filed in San Francisco on Feb. 19 claims Quinn Emanuel violated a fee agreement for the defense of Discovery Sales Inc. president Ayman Shahid, the Recorder (sub. req.) reports.
According to the complaint, the agreement capped the fees of two partners working on the case at $895 an hour, provided that there would be no mark-up on out-of-pocket expenses, and said there would be no charges for office conferences and getting new lawyers “up to speed” on the case.
Yet Discovery Sales received bills listing a $1,175 hourly rate for one of the partners, marking up the rate for document reproduction, and billing for attorney conferences within the firm, the suit says. Discovery Sales requested corrected invoices, but did not receive them until months later. The revised invoices corrected only some of the errors, the suit contends, and new invoices had more improper charges, including billing for familiarizing new lawyers with the case.
At the conclusion of the case, Quinn Emanuel had billed $1.56 million in attorney fees and costs, which was reduced to $1.49 million after a fee arbitration hearing. Discovery Sales claims the reasonable value of Quinn Emanuel’s services was no more than $751,000, an amount Discovery has already paid.
The suit says the plaintiffs “are informed and believe” that hourly billings were exaggerated and task descriptions were altered to change descriptions that didn’t qualify for reimbursement.
A Quinn Emanuel representative did not respond to the Recorder’s request for comment.
