A dispute between Texas and Pennsylvania personal injury law firms over how to split an attorney fee from a $44 million settlement has been dismissed.

According to court records, the case, captioned Sheridan v. Roberts & Roberts, was dismissed with prejudice Thursday, little more than a year before it was filed. The docket entry announcing the dismissal did not indicate why the matter had been dismissed.

The move comes more than two months after the judge overseeing the lawsuit denied efforts by plaintiff Thomas Sheridan and his law firm Sheridan & Murray to dismiss counterclaims brought against him by the defendant, Tyler, Texas-based Roberts & Roberts.

The dispute, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, stemmed from a $44 million settlement secured for a Texas oilfield worker who was paralyzed after an improperly attached light fixture on an oil derrick fell more than 100 feet onto his head. The case, which stemmed from conduct in Pennsylvania, had been filed in Philadelphia, with Sheridan taking the lead in the settlement talks.

However, after the case resolved in late 2018, a dispute arose, with Sheridan contending that attorneys at Roberts & Roberts were attempting to breach the agreement they entered into that capped the Texas firm's referral fee. Roberts & Roberts' counterclaims, however, alleged that Sheridan misled the Texas firm into thinking the case was only financially viable if the referral fee was capped, only to have the case settle for tens of millions of dollars months later.

Mark Tanner of Feldman Shepherd Wohlgelernter Tanner Weinstock Dodig represented Sheridan, and Philadelphia attorney Clifford Haines represented Roberts & Roberts. Neither returned a call seeking comment.

According to U.S. District Judge Joshua Wolson of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, who handled the case, the plaintiffs in the underlying personal injury suit, who live in Texas, retained Roberts & Roberts in 2013, and that firm entered into a referral fee agreement with Sheridan's firm in 2014, allotting 40% of the fee to the Texas firm and 60% to Sheridan & Murray.

Then in February 2018, Sheridan called Roberts with a gloomy outlook on the case, telling him that the firm would need to cap its referral fee at $320,000 in order make sure the case was still economically viable for Sheridan & Murray to pursue, according to court papers. Roberts agreed to the proposed revision, but then, in November, the case settled for $44 million, court papers said.

After Roberts & Roberts learned of the settlement amount, the firm disputed the referral fee, arguing that it had been misled. Sheridan eventually filed a lawsuit, and Roberts & Roberts filed counterclaims alleging intentional and negligent misrepresentation, intentional nondisclosure, breach of fiduciary duty, constructive fraud, conversion, breach of contract, promissory estoppel and unjust enrichment.

Wolson allowed those counterclaims to proceed in December, but the most recent activity in the case dealt with a motion to compel a third-party lawyer to sit for part of a deposition, after the lawyer refused, saying he would not answer any questions unless he was compensated for his time.

According to Wolson, before the deposition was to take place, Sheridan had agreed to compensate the third-party lawyer, and, although the attorney claimed that Roberts had also agreed to pay him for sitting for the deposition, Roberts disputed that there was any agreement for compensation. Wolson said the third-party lawyer sat through Sheridan's portion of the deposition, but then refused to answer Roberts' questions on cross-examination.

After Roberts filed a motion to compel, Wolson said the parties might have needed to subpoena the third-party lawyer if he had refused to sit for any of the deposition question, but, since he had already been deposed by one side, the court could compel him to answer the questions on cross. Any dispute about compensation agreements, Wolson noted, would need to be taken up in a separate contract claim.

"The court notes that he has likely already spent more time (and money) fighting this issue than he would have spent had he simply answered the questions at his deposition," Wolson said.