Judge Orders 'The Big Egos' in Butler Wooten, Cheeley Fee Dispute Into Mediation
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Craig Schwall said he thought former Butler Wooten partner Robert Cheeley had an "uphill battle to set aside an arbitration award."
September 06, 2018 at 06:14 PM
6 minute read
“There's one thing I think we can all agree on: This case makes lawyers look bad,” said Fulton County Superior Court Judge Craig Schwall as a contentious hearing involving a dispute over millions of dollars in attorney fees drew to a close Thursday morning.
Asked to void a confidential arbitration award favoring plaintiffs' powerhouse Butler Wooten & Peak over former firm partner Robert Cheeley, Schwall noted the high-powered legal talent present and lamented that the case had come before him.
“We have some of the finest and most respected lawyers in the state in this courtroom, and many of them are my friends,” Schwall said.
Schwall said Cheeley had an “uphill battle to set aside an arbitration award.”
Expressing his belief that the parties could “sit down in good faith” to negotiate a resolution, Schwall ordered them into mediation next month and appointed former King & Spalding managing partner and litigator Ralph Levy, now a mediator with JAMS, to work on a resolution.
Schwall said Levy had told him during a recent conversation he handled the “the hardest cases” with “the big egos. I think we have a lot here,” the judge said.
Former Gov. Roy Barnes, representing Cheeley with Cheeley Law group lawyer Scott Dickinson, began the hearing by saying that, since he'd signed onto the case, he'd been threatened with a lawsuit, accused of tampering with the court's filing system and “called an SOB.”
Barnes, who had a problem filing Cheeley's petition to void the arbitration award last month and had to refile a few days later, said Butler Wooten's accusations that he had misrepresented when he did so “shows what has happened throughout this case: If you're on the other side and you don't agree with them, you're a crook.”
William Stone of Blakely's Stone Law Group, representing Butler Wooten, said Cheeley had initiated the dispute by first refusing to cooperate with the arbitrator and then fighting the subsequent award when he lost.
“We've made offers” to resolve the case, Stone said, but Cheeley's response was a “threat” to “go public and embarrass Butler Wooten” by challenging the award in court.
Stone, who represents Butler Wooten with Finch McCranie partner Michael Sullivan and counsel Walter Jospin, said Cheeley's arguments contravened both the Georgia Arbitration Code and public policy and that he and his lawyers were engaged frivolous litigation.
“But that's just disagreeing with Gov. Barnes,” said Stone. “If you disagree with Gov. Barnes, he takes extreme umbrage at it.”
The dispute is rooted in three cases that Cheeley—a founding partner of Butler Wooten who left in 1997 and rejoined in 2014—began working on before departing the firm a second time in June 2016.
The main case in dispute ended in January 2017, when a Bryan County jury awarded $15 million to Megan Richards, one of two young nursing school students who survived a crash with a tractor-trailer that killed five of their fellow students. While the jury was out, the parties reached a confidential high-low agreement, ending the case.
After the trial concluded, Butler Wooten asserted a lien for attorneys' fees and expenses for that case, according to Cheeley's filings.
The other cases involve a pending wrongful death action against Toyota in Georgia's Northern District Court, and one against Johnson & Johnson claiming its baby power products had caused a woman's ovarian cancer. That case was transferred from Georgia's Middle District and was consolidated with other J&J talc cases as multidistrict litigation in New Jersey.
As detailed in court filings and during the hearing, after Cheeley left Butler Wooten, the firm claimed that—under his partnership agreement—it was entitled to 75 percent of the fees accruing from the cases. By December 2016, Cheeley had asked the chief judge of the Superior Court of Muscogee County—Columbus is home to one of Butler Wooten's key offices—to implement confidential arbitration proceedings over the fees in the cases.
On Aug. 14, shortly after the arbitration award was entered in Butler Wooten's favor, Cheeley filed to have it vacated in Fulton County Superior Court. On Aug. 15, Butler Wooten filed to have the award confirmed in Muscogee County Superior Court, where Chief Judge Bemon McBride III had authorized the arbitration.
At Thursday's hearing, Butler Wooten argued that the case should be transferred back to Muscogee County, where venue was already established.
Schwall also heard from a lawyer for Richards, the plaintiff in the Bryan County case, who filed a motion to intervene on behalf of Cheeley.
Attorney C. David Joyner said his client believed Butler Wooten was deserving of fees, but she opposed the firm's claim to 75 percent of them.
The amount of the fees at issue is confidential, but Stone said Barnes had written to McBride that they were about $8.25 million. Stone said that figure was not accurate.
After the hearing, Butler Wooten founding partner Jim Butler Jr. said that figure was wildly inflated.
“That's something Roy Barnes just made up as a threat to shut us down,” said Butler. “There's never been any dispute between these parties over that kind of money.”
Butler said he agreed with Schwall that the case made lawyers look bad, but otherwise declined to discuss it.
Barnes and Cheeley also declined to comment—and the former governor declined to say who had called him an “SOB.”
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