Sorting through a tangle of fee-splitting agreements in a personal injury case, a New Jersey appeals court ruled that such deals can't be unilaterally modified when one of the lawyers enters into a subsequent deal to split fees with a third party.

The Appellate Division affirmed a lower court's ruling in favor of a lawyer who claimed he was shortchanged in a fee-sharing deal with Davis, Saperstein & Salomon of Teaneck, New Jersey. West Orange, New Jersey, attorney David Cohen reached a deal with the firm, giving him 20% of the legal fees from a construction worker's accident suit. But Davis Saperstein later claimed that Cohen was entitled to 20% of the proceeds that remained after the firm paid its obligation to another attorney in a fee-splitting deal stemming from an insurance bad-faith claim.