The Fourth District Court of Appeal made an example of Plantation lawyer Steven B. Katz and Boca Raton firm Frank, Weinberg & Black on Wednesday, when it retracted a $500,000 participation fee that both sides had scuffled over.

“This appeal concerns the claims of lawyers to a participation fee where none of them complied with the Rules Regulating the Florida Bar,” the opinion began.

According to the court, the case was a prime example of a Rule 4-1.5 violation that “typically occurs in the shadows and rarely emerges in the light of day.”

Katz worked as an associate at the firm between 2007 and 2013, during which time his wife's friend Tammie Taylor tried to hire him for a potential whistleblower case against her employer.

The firm's managing partner said no, because the case involved Medicare fraud — a practice area in which it did not specialize. According to the opinion, a colleague suggested Miami Medicare attorney Anthony C. Vitale, so Katz referred Taylor to that attorney, who filed suit in June 2008 on her behalf.

The agreement bore no mention of Katz, but Vitale later emailed him to say he'd get a participation fee — a 25 percent slice of any settlement and attorney fees in Taylor's case.

According to the opinion, Katz sporadically checked in with Vitale about the case over several years — during which time he left Frank Weinberg & Black and began his own firm, the Law Office of Steven B. Katz.

When the case eventually settled in 2016, things got murky.

Anthony C. Vitale. Courtesy photo.

Vitale reached out to Katz that November to sort out the participation fee — $500,200.14. But Katz's former employer, Frank, Weinberg & Black, was listed as the recipient, not Katz. According to the opinion, Katz asked his old firm to relinquish its claim on the money, but it refused.

Vitale stepped in with an interpleader complaint, setting in motion a legal dispute between Katz and the firm. The trial court sided with the firm, which reasoned Katz was its associate when he referred the Taylor case to Vitale.

The Fourth DCA didn't see it that way.

“On appeal, Katz and the law firm argue contract and agency law, sprinkling in some procedural points, as if this were a garden variety commercial dispute,” the opinion said. “It is not.”

The court dismissed the appeal and stressed that it chose to write its opinion in the hope of discouraging others from making the same mistake.

“The rules contemplate that the client's consent be secured at the outset of the case, not when the case is 99.9 percent over,” the opinion said.

'Take on the role of potted plants'

Fourth DCA Judge Robert M. Gross wrote the opinion, which cited the Florida Supreme Court in its reasoning and avoided addressing the one remaining avenue the parties might have to claim the fee — quantum meruit, which allows payment for services without a corresponding contract.

“We leave the resolution of this thorny issue to another day,” the opinion concluded.

Judge Spencer D. Levine backed the opinion, while Judge Alan O. Forst concurred specially with an opinion that doubted the legitimacy of Katz and the firm's supposed participation.

“Both parties ask us to essentially take on the role of potted plants and disregard the safeguards set forth in the Rules Regulating the Florida Bar, since the client is not complaining,” Forst wrote.

Lawyers for Katz and his firm, Jeffrey C. Schneider and Victor Petrescu of Levine Kellogg Lehman Schneider & Grossman in Miami, and David C. Silver and Jason S. Miller of Silver Miller in Coral Springs, did not respond to requests for comment before deadline.

Counsel to Frank and Vitale, Weinberg & Black, Steven M. Katzman and Charles J. Bennardini of Katzman Wasserman Bennardini & Rubinstein in Boca Raton, were also unresponsive before deadline.

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