Dowd Bennett and Blitz, Bardgett & Deutsch LC law firms will collect more than $276 million from settlement of St. Louis' Rams-NFL lawsuit - St. Louis Business Journal - St. Louis Business Journal
The two law firms representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the Los Angeles Rams and the National Football League are in line to receive more than $276 million in fees from the settlement announced Wednesday — more than one-third of the $790 million total — based on terms of a contract approved in 2016.
The Clayton-based firms are Blitz, Bardgett & Deutsch LC and Dowd Bennett LLP. The plaintiffs are the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority (RSA) — the public entity which owns the Dome and in 2015 and 2016 spent $18 million on a failed plan to keep the Rams in St. Louis with a Mississippi Riverfront stadium — plus the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County.
Four months before the suit was filed, the RSA's board on Dec. 7, 2016, voted unanimously to hire the firms. The pact, later duplicated by the other plaintiffs, said the Blitz and Dowd firms would get 35% of any winnings under a contingency fee agreement. A jury trial was scheduled for January in the lawsuit, in which the plaintiffs sought $1 billion or more.
In addition to the estimated $276 million in fees from the settlement, the contract says the law firms will receive an undisclosed sum for "costs incurred such as photocopies, filing fees, court reporting costs, depositions, transcripts, witness fees, subpoenas, expert witness fees, etc," says a copy of the agreement, obtained through an open-records request.
Dowd lawyers Michelle Nasser and Jim Bennett, who worked on the case, didn't return messages seeking comment. Chris Bauman, an attorney with the Blitz firm who worked on the case, also didn't return messages.
Two days after the RSA agreed to the deal with the two law firms, Dowd on Dec. 9, 2016, announced that former Missouri Gov,. Jay Nixon would join the firm after leaving office the next month. As governor, Nixon appointed former Anheuser-Busch executive Dave Peacock to work with Bob Blitz, the attorney representing the RSA, on crafting the riverfront stadium plan to retain the Rams franchise, which left in 2016. Nixon also appointed much of the RSA board.
Dowd said in September that Nixon played no role in the RSA's selection of the law firm. Nixon, who hasn't worked on the case, would not receive compensation from it, the law firm added.
Before the RSA selected the Dowd firm to work on the lawsuit against the Rams and the NFL, the firm won a $78 million verdict in 2015 for Barbara Morriss, who claimed Wells Fargo mishandled her trusts. Dowd also achieved a total victory in 2014 for Anheuser-Busch when it was sued for $15 million by former executive Francine Katz, who claimed gender discrimination in compensation. And when Emerson Electric was sued for more than $10 million in a trade secret and contract dispute, Dowd prevailed on all counts and won $5.4 million in damages on a counterclaim.
The Blitz, Bardgett & Deutsch law firm, led by Blitz, has been paid substantial amounts for its representation of the RSA. The Business Journal reported as of August 2016, the Blitz firm had been paid more than $1 million for work on the riverfront stadium plan and a conflict with the Rams over ownership of Rams Park, the team's Earth City training facility. The RSA lost, and the Rams may acquire it for $1 in 2024.
Last month, a state-court judge disqualified Blitz from the lawsuit against the Rams and NFL. The league in September moved to disqualify him from representing the plaintiffs because it wanted to preserve its right to call him as a witness at trial. St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Christopher McGraugh granted the disqualification, ruling that the defendants "have shown that Mr. Blitz is likely a necessary witness at trial."
It was unclear Wednesday whether Blitz, who didn't return messages seeking comment, would share in any part of the settlement money that the Blitz firm will receive.
The settlement also comes more than two months after St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones named Sheena Hamilton, a partner at Dowd Bennett, to be St. Louis city counselor. The city said Hamilton was an equity partner at Dowd, where she was a client manager for Fortune 100 companies and government or quasi-government offices and managed litigation, investigations, budgets, staffing and compliance.
Nick Desideri, a spokesman for Jones, said at the time that Hamilton had "no involvement" with the Rams litigation, and called "ridiculous" any notion that, as a member of the government, she'd seek a settlement to benefit Dowd.
source: https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2021/11/24/law-firms-settlkement-more-than-276-million-rams.html
Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.