Jonathan Palmer has joined Bryan Knight's litigation boutique as a name partner, giving it a new name, Knight Palmer.

With Palmer, the Atlanta firm, which generally handles business disputes on an hourly fee basis, is taking on higher risk, but potentially higher reward cases on a contingency basis, such as class actions and insurance coverage disputes.

Knight Palmer now has five lawyers, including Sherri Buda, Scott McAlpine and Nick Sears, plus paralegal Laura Heppolette and staff.

Palmer, who brings the insurance recovery and class action cases, said he joined Knight's larger shop on Nov. 1 because he got busier a lot faster than he'd expected after starting his own solo firm last year, in large part because of a sizable class action that recently settled for $15 million.

The class action case heated up soon after he opened his own shop. He served as co-counsel with Ken Canfield of Doffermyre, Shields, Canfield & Knowles and Chicago lawyers Adam Levitt and Amy Keller of plaintiffs firm DiCello Levitt. With Canfield and Levitt as lead counsel, the four represented a class of about 370,000 merchants suing North American Bancard over alleged overcharges from improperly inflated or hidden fees.

The case, T.S. Kao v. North American Bancard, entered the discovery phase last year, and on Aug. 19 U.S. District Judge Steve Jones of the Northern District of Georgia approved a $15 million settlement agreement.

Before his solo firm, Palmer spent nine years at Doffermyre Shields, where he handled business litigation with Everette Doffermyre and class actions with Canfield.

"When I went out on my own, I had not planned on growing all that quickly, but the business had other ideas," Palmer explained. "I wound up with far more work than I could get done, and I was at a point where I would have to start turning down good cases."

Contingency fee litigation

Besides class actions, Knight and Palmer said they see a need in Atlanta for smaller firms willing to handle high-stakes business lawsuits on contingency for companies that can't afford Big Law hourly rates.

"A lot of firms won't take that risk—and at a big firm you've got to go through the contingency committee to get approval," Knight said. "Our DNA is business litigation, but we are nimble enough to take some plaintiffs work on contingency."

Palmer, for instance, is representing a family-owned fertilizer manufacturer in Plains, Georgia, in a dispute with its insurance carrier on a contingency basis. The fertilizer company's factory was "decimated," he said, by Hurricane Michael in 2018, but its carrier refused to pay the claim.

"They paid a lot of money for a good, first-party property policy," said Palmer, but wouldn't be able to afford the hourly fees of a big Atlanta firm to take on their insurer. (Palmer worked as an insurance claims adjuster before becoming a lawyer.)

Palmer joined forces with Knight just five months after Knight's former law partner, James Johnson, went solo after co-founding Knight Johnson with him in 2011. (Knight and Johnson told the Daily Report in June that it was an amicable split so Johnson could develop a more trial-oriented personal injury and white-collar defense practice.)

Knight and the firm's other lawyers and staff remained in their midtown office space at 1360 Peachtree St. N.E. and continued their business litigation practice representing developers, builders and business owners in trade secret, restrictive covenant, partnership and other disputes, particularly in real estate and construction.

While the firm generally bills by the hour, Knight said that a recent $4.2 million win in an unusual contingency fee case over, somewhat coincidentally, an insurance coverage dispute both whetted his appetite and gave him the resources to take on more financial risk.

In that matter, Knight initially represented real estate investment group RM Kids in a defective title claim against Old Republic National Title Insurance Co. on an hourly fee basis. Knight, Buda and Johnson tried the case in 2015 and won a $7.1 million verdict, but it was overturned on appeal. At that point, RM Kids was tapped out and asked Knight to retry the case on contingency. He agreed, and RM Kids prevailed again at trial last year. The title insurer paid the verdict earlier this month, which came to $4.5 million with interest.

So the timing was right when he connected with Palmer early in the summer. Palmer had just had lunch with Mike Caplan and James Cobb of litigation boutique Caplan Cobb and told them he needed more lawyers and staff. They suggested that Knight might welcome another lawyer after Johnson's departure.

Palmer and Knight embarked on an intensive courtship process after they hit it off over an initial lunch of their own. After more lunches, then golf, then dinner with their wives and families, the two decided to form a partnership.

"Adding class actions and insurance coverage cases [on contingency] allows me to take some swings at some home runs," Knight said. "As an hourly guy, it seemed beneficial to the firm."

Knight Palmer is open to growing beyond five lawyers, Palmer said, but they want to stay small enough to avoid bureaucracy and committees. "We have no desire to grow to a size where a committee determines if the firm can take on contingency or hybrid fee cases," he said. "We would lose that flexibility that is part of our DNA."