MoFo Sued for Overbilling, Malpractice--but Wins Big ITC Battle over HD TVs
By Ben Hallman
April 10, 2009
It was a good news/bad news kind of week for Morrison & Foerster. First, the bad: As reported last week by the Daily Journal, a small start-up company that makes electronic jukeboxes sued MoFo and two former partners, Gerald Dodson and Erica Wilson, in San Francisco state court for legal malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty. According to Ecast's complaint, the company is seeking damages to compensate for the $4.8 million it paid MoFo in attorneys' fees, a sum that the complaint describes as "staggering."Ecast also wants to collect the $2.65 million it paid to Beck, Ross, Bismonte & Finley, the San Jose law firm that took over its patent infringement defense in November 2007, when Dodson and Wilson left MoFo for Goodwin Procter. And it's blaming MoFo for the undisclosed settlement it eventually reached with Rowe International, and demanding damages related to the settlement.
Here's some background. In December 2005, after Rowe filed an infringement suit against Ecast, John Taylor, Ecast's CEO, called then-MoFo partner Gerald Dodson. Both Dodson and Wilson, who declined to comment for this story, had represented Ecast before. The complaint says that Taylor received personal assurances that Dodson would handle the case himself.
Despite these assurances, Dodson faded into the background, leaving a team of MoFo lawyers to do Ecast's work--and bill liberally for it, according to the complaint. For the 23-month period from when MoFo took the case until November 2007, when Dodson and Wilson left, "over 48 attorneys, paralegals, and staff billed for work on this file," the complaint says. Furthermore, Wilson took a leading roll, even though Ecast had expressly asked that she not.
Diane Deckard of The Deckard Law Firm, who is representing Ecast in the case, told the Litigation Daily that after Dodson and Wilson left for Goodwin Proctor, Ecast's new counsel at Beck Ross "found some real deficiencies in services," including problems with discovery and an expert witness. (The complaint describes each alleged deficiency in detail.)
Morrison & Forester sent us this statement about the case: "For quite some time, Ecast has owed Morrison & Foerster a substantial amount for past work. Ecast promised to pay those amounts on an agreed-upon schedule. Ecast and its current investors have apparently now decided to try to avoid honoring its promise to pay what it owes. Ecast's claims are baseless."
On Friday, meanwhile, MoFo got a morale boost with partner Karl Kramer's win at the International Trade Commission for MoFo client Funai. The ITC ruling blocks Funai's rival Vizio from importing high-definition TVs into the United States.
The ruling confirms a decision by an administrative law judge that found Vizio and other manufacturers had infringed a patent related to the reception of digital TV signals, according to The Recorder's story on the win. "The exclusion order is a big hammer," Kramer told The Recorder.
The case was hotly contested because the patents are critical to the new digital television format being pushed by Congress. Vizio even hired lawyers from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr to complain to the FCC that Funai wasn't licensing its patents at a reasonable and nondiscriminatory rate, as is required by industry standards.
Sidley Austin partner Peter Kang represented Vizio during the ITC proceedings. Vizio also brought in Jones Day near the end of the case. Mark Samuels of O'Melveny & Myers represented another defendant, TPV Technology.
