The Florida Bar filed a complaint against Phillip Timothy Howard of Howard & Associates P.A. in Tallahassee, alleging he violated 15 bar rules by misappropriating client funds, providing false and incomplete trust accounting, and charging an excessive fee for negotiating a medical lien.

Howard, admitted to the Florida Bar in 1987, is also tangled up in an unrelated bitter court battle with onetime co-counsel J.B. Harris in Coral Gables. In lawsuits spanning Florida and Texas, both seek sanctions against one other over fee disagreements in a group of tobacco cases.