A Texas truck driver sued Houston plaintiff's lawyers Jimmy Williamson and Cyndi Rusnak, their firm and the Law Offices of Michael Pohl, alleging they formed a “barratry joint venture” to operate a “barratry pyramid scheme” to solicit clients to sue BP over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Plaintiff Dezzie Brumfield alleges in a petition filed June 8 in the 189th District Court in Harris County that the joint venture paid about $5 million in “barratry pass-through money” to consultants who in turn paid case runners to unlawfully solicit clients “in what can only be described as a barratry pyramid scheme.” Over a few months in 2012, Brumfield alleges, the joint venture had “improperly solicited as many as ten thousand potential clients who would sue British Petroleum over the oil spill,” but the venture later terminated many of them as clients.

Brumfield alleges he received an unsolicited call in 2012 from a case runner who told him he was guaranteed $50,000 if he would hire Williamson, Rusnak and Pohl to file a claim for him against BP. Brumfield alleges he sent Williamson & Rusnak his claim paperwork, and he continued to provide information from 2012 to 2015, but the firm ended that representation in August 2015, just three weeks before a deadline to file a claim against BP.