Morgan & Morgan attorney Benjamin Webster. Courtesy photo

An attorney with Morgan & Morgan's Business Trial Group helped a client secure a $1.79 million award from her former counsel in a legal malpractice lawsuit Aug. 23.

Orlando-based litigator Benjamin Webster represented real estate broker Laurel Lee Buescher in her suit against Vero Beach, Florida, lawyer Aaron Johnson and the Collins Brown Barkett Chartered law firm in Brevard Circuit Court. On Aug. 23, a jury returned a $1.79 million award, according to the verdict sheet in the case, finding that Johnson and the firm were negligent in their representation of Buescher and caused her to lose a case that she otherwise would have prevailed in.

According to an amended complaint, Buescher retained Collins Brown in 2007 in order to pursue a commission she hadn't been properly compensated for. Buescher contended she was only partially paid after procuring the buyer for an 1,800-acre commercial Palm Bay, Florida, property. After his firm was hired, Johnson allegedly waited until May 2009, the period when the four-year statute of limitations on Buescher's claim was due to expire, to enter a complaint on his client's behalf. Instead of Buescher, the suit purportedly listed Sun N Sea Real Estate P.A. as the named plaintiff.

Unfortunately the business did not exist at the time of the alleged transgression, prompting the suit's respondent to challenge the legal action for lack of standing. Following the error, Johnson and the firm withdrew as Buescher's legal counsel. Because the statute of limitations had ran out, Buescher was unable to move forward with her claim.

Webster said the deal Buescher initially pursued legal action over had been worth $50 million. The attorney added the defendants' failure to communicate that clerical errors had occurred left Buescher without a means to pursue the proceeds she felt were rightfully hers.

Read the complaint:

"It was basically DOA when it was filed," Webster said of the complaint, which prompted his client's legal malpractice suit.

Webster said the Aug. 23 verdict against Johnson and the firm was reached after the jury determined Buescher was entitled to a 4% commission on the closing at the heart of the litigation.

"We held him accountable for destroying her chances of ever being able to recover that commission," the attorney said.

Neither Johnson nor the firm provided a comment on the verdict by press time. A defense motion for summary judgment argued that the case should have been tossed because Buescher could not prove that she would have prevailed in the suit were it not for her former counsel's alleged errors.

Webster said his client was "elated and relieved" following last week's verdict.

"She's been chasing this commission she was owed for literally 15 years," he said. "She didn't want to give up on it because it was something she earned. So to finally have a jury rule on it … affirmed that the conduct of the defendants was the reason that she was not able to get the commission before."

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