James Butler Jr. (left) and Robert D. Cheeley

A multimillion-dollar fee dispute between high-powered plaintiffs' firm Butler Wooten & Peak and former partner Robert Cheeley quietly resolved after both sides met in mediation late last year.

Following a contentious back and forth over what Cheeley's lawyer, former Gov. Roy Barnes, suggested could be as much as $8 million, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Craig Schwall ordered the case into mediation.

Schwall appointed former King & Spalding senior litigation partner Ralph Levy, now a mediator with JAMS, to hear the case.

According to court filings, the parties mediated the dispute in October; a series of sealed filings indicates the parties entered a stipulated dismissal of all claims in November, and the case is closed.

Following a hearing last year, Butler Wooten partner Jim Butler said the sums at issue were far below the $8 million cited by Barnes, which he had termed “something Roy Barnes just made up as a threat to shut us down.”

In an email Wednesday, Cheeley simply said the matter had been resolved.

Barnes did not respond to requests for comment, nor did Butler or his firm's counsel in the case, William Stone of the Stone Law Group.

Cheeley was a founding partner of Butler Wooten who left the firm in 1997 and rejoined it in 2014.

As detailed in court filings, the dispute involved three cases Cheeley was handling when he again left the firm in June 2016. After his departure, Butler Wooten claimed it was entitled to 75 percent of the fees accruing from the cases.  

In December 2016, Cheeley initiated confidential arbitration proceedings over the fees in Muscogee County, where Butler Wooten is headquartered.

The main case in dispute ended in 2017 with a jury award of $15 million for a nursing school student who survived a crash with a tractor-trailer; the actual sum awarded is unknown because of a confidential high-low agreement the parties reached during jury deliberations.

The other cases involve a pending wrongful death action against Toyota in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia (in which Barnes and his Barnes Law Group are also representing the plaintiff), and one against Johnson & Johnson over talc-containing baby power products, now part of consolidated multidistrict litigation in federal court in New Jersey.

Shortly after the confidential arbitration award was entered, Cheeley filed to have it vacated in Fulton County Superior Court, where Butler Wooten sought to have it confirmed.

During last year's hearing in September, Barnes told Schwall he'd been called an “SOB” and depicted as a “crook” as he handled the litigation.

During that hearing, Schwall cautioned Cheeley that arbitration awards are very hard to set aside under Georgia law, and the judge urged the “big egos” on either side to compromise.

“This case makes lawyers look bad,” Schwall said at the time.