A California jury ordered Manatt, Phelps & Phillips to fork over $335,000 to a legal recruiter who sued the firm for allegedly breaching an oral contract related to its 2013 hires of financial services partners Donna Wilson and John McGuinness.

Following a weeklong trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, legal staffing agency Gregg Ziskind & Associates Inc. secured a favorable verdict in the contract case against Manatt. Ziskind—represented by lawyers from Gerard Fox Law—claimed that he helped place Wilson and McGuinness in Manatt's Los Angeles headquarters but that the firm paid a rival legal recruiter instead.

After less than a day of deliberations, a jury on Tuesday found that Manatt had breached an oral contract with Ziskind and that the recruiter was owed $335,000 in damages. Morgan Pietz, a partner at Gerard Fox who served as second chair at trial alongside the firm's namesake and managing partner, said that his client was happy with the outcome, which followed nearly four years of litigation.