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Fired Associate Launches Mimic Site to Trash-Talk Firm
New Jersey Law Journal
November 02, 2009
Google "Levinson Axelrod" and you find two addresses -- www.levinsonaxelrod.com and www.njlawyers.com -- that bring you to the Edison, N.J., personal injury firm's Web site.
But the query also pulls up www.levinsonaxelrod.net, and clicking that one makes clear that it's not run by the firm. The first words on the home page are "The truth behind the lies."
The site is the creation of Edward Harrington Heyburn, an associate at Levinson Axelrod from 1998 until he was let go in 2004. An audio clip dedicates it "to all the working class people that get stepped on by their rich bosses."
Since his initial post on Sept. 30, which called senior partner Richard Levinson "The Hypocrite Behind the Curtain," Heyburn has used the site to criticize and mock the firm and its partners and to showcase its in-court losses. He even provides a link to the Office of Attorney Ethics Web site for anyone who might want to file a grievance.
His barbs about partners include: "David Wheaton -- A used car salesman with a law degree"; "Adam Rothenberg -- A man without friends"; and "Ronald Grayzel -- Lawyer of the Year? Really?"
Another target is Levinson Axelrod's boast on its actual site that six of its partners are Super Lawyers. Under the heading "Superlawyers = Super Scam," Heyburn wrote that the designation "misleads the public into thinking that the title Super Lawyer has something to do with their achievements."
The firm isn't taking the Web attack lying down. It has hired Thomas Cafferty, of Scarinci Hollenbeck in Lyndhurst, N.J., who says that he will file an action against Heyburn in the next few days.
Heyburn says he was fired April 15, 2004, when the firm learned he was planning to set up his own practice. He was tired of being caught in the middle of partners' disagreements about the firm's direction, he says. Since his departure, he has litigated against the firm and won on obtaining client files, vacation pay and referral fees, he says.
Asked why he set up the site, Heyburn says, "When I see all their advertisements I think it's a fraud and they're not who they represent themselves to be." It has been "cathartic to get the truth out."
What Heyburn calls "truth" may be subject to interpretation. Here are some examples of his postings:
• Levinson "has put the firm above his own family" and when Heyburn's wife was in labor, Levinson had his secretary call him "to ask mindless questions about cases that were weeks off and of no importance" in order to "make sure I knew that he put the firm's business above any of my personal business, including the birth of my son." On Sept. 11, 2001, Levinson would not close the office to allow that employees to check on their loved ones and friends and cope with the day's events, Heyburn says.
• Grayzel is "one of the most overrated human beings alive," someone who pretends to be professional and sympathetic but is neither, Heyburn says.
• Wheaton is "disliked more inside of the firm than anywhere else," and is someone who "would dump every one of his shitty cases on you so he wouldn't lose," Heyburn says, calling it "hard to encapsulate the combination of ignorance and arrogance tied together in a pretentious bow." He likens Wheaton to Denny Crane, the character played by William Shatner on the television show "Boston Legal" -- "except that Wheaton had none of the sympathetic characteristics" of Shatner's character.
• Rothenberg was "the most arrogant, self-absorbed person I ever met," who was mocked by other associates and had "absolutely no ability to see how he was viewed by others," Heyburn says. As a young associate, he says, he tried to befriend Rothenberg, hoping for some mentoring, but he "was an asshole." Heyburn says he stopped talking to Rothenberg after he told a "sexually inappropriate" joke in front of a female law student, a friend of Heyburn's wife, who was interviewing for an internship.
The only Levinson Axelrod lawyer Heyburn had good things to say about was Mark Kuminski, calling him "an incredible attorney that pushes himself harder than he pushes anyone else around him" and "should write the textbook on how to set up a personal injury case." With Kuminski, "What You See is What You Get," he says. "Too bad his partners did not have the same integrity."
Other posts trumpet the firm's defeats: the loss of a $1.64 million jury verdict on appeal ("Ron Grayzel's sniffles could be heard throughout the Hughes Justice Complex") and "David Wheaton loses client's case and can't convince Appellate Division to give him a 2nd chance."
Asked about the firm's impending suit, Heyburn says he "understood they would come after me" but "nothing I wrote isn't God's honest truth."
Though Cafferty would not discuss the suit, Richard Ravin, whose practice focuses on Internet and intellectual property law, sees several potential legal claims -- defamation, trademark infringement and violation of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, or ACPA. The firm could also try to get the domain name transferred to it through arbitration with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which oversees domain name registrations.
Bad faith is required under ACPA and ICANN's domain dispute policy, while trademark and ACPA claims require an effect on commerce, says Ravin, of Hartman & Winnicki in Paramus, N.J.
Heyburn did not append the word "sucks" after the firm name until Thursday. Adding the word could provide some legal protection by making it clear the site is not the official firm site but a "gripe site."
Calls to Levinson, Grayzel, Wheaton, Rothenberg and Richard Marcolus, another partner mentioned on the site, were not returned.
But in a quirk of timing, Levinson Axelrod issued a press release Thursday announcing its "newly-redesigned Web site" to further the "goal of making a positive first impression on their customers, whether it occurs in person or online."
