Nine More Ex-Dewey Partners Hit With Clawback Suits

Add nine more names to the list of former Dewey & LeBoeuf partners being sued by the defunct firm’s liquidiation trust over compensation and other benefits they received in Dewey’s last three and a half years of existence.

The most prominent of those targeted in the latest round of suits—from whom the Dewey estate seeks a total of $3.8 million—is former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele. In its suit against Steele, who also served as Maryland’s lieutenant governor, the Dewey trust seeks $305,637 it says he collected in yearly installments from 2009 until Dewey’s collapse in May 2012. Steele—a cofounder, along with fellow Beltway insider Lanny Davis, of Washington, D.C.–based lobbying, media and consulting firm Purple Nation Solutions—did not respond to a request for comment Monday.

The Dewey trust has so far sued 22 former firm partners as part of its effort to repay the failed firm’s creditors and plans to sue 23 more, lawyers for the trust have said in court. All the ex-partners being targeted declined to join a $71 million settlement struck in 2012 between 400 of their former colleagues and the Dewey bankruptcy estate. Unlike that deal, which sought the return of a portion of the money received by the former Dewey partners in 2011 and 2012, the suits now being filed extend the clawback period to the beginning of 2009, potentially exposing the defendants to much greater liability.

By fixing on the earlier date, the liquidation trust has also dragged former partners who left the firm well before Dewey’s now-infamous woes came to light into the firm’s bankruptcy proceedings. Among those in that category: Chiu-Ti Jansen, whom the estate is suing for $58,200. Jansen left Dewey predecessor firm LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae in 2006, a year before it merged with Dewey Ballantine. After spending several years at Sidley Austin, she now publishes a Chinese-English lifestyle magazine, hosts fashion-related TV programs, and contributes to publications including the Financial Times’ Chinese edition, according to her website. She could not immediately be reached for comment Monday.

For another former firm partner, Texas energy lawyer Steven Otillar, being named in the latest batch of clawback claims marks a second brush with Dewey-related litigation.