2 lawyers in Neb. court fighting over $11.25M fee - Sacramento Bee

LINCOLN, Neb. -- Two lawyers who helped a former Nebraska woman injured in a car accident win a $22.5 million settlement from General Motors in 2006 are fighting over how to divide more than $11 million in fees.

The dispute between former Lincoln lawyer Dan McCord and Los Angeles attorney Michael J. Piuze is back in court this week.

The Lincoln Journal Star reports (http://bit.ly/NzVGB7) that a Lancaster County jury is listening to the dispute over $11.25 million in legal fees the attorneys received for working the case.

McCord says he should have been paid $562,500 more than the $2.25 million he was paid because he was supposed to receive 25 percent of the fee. Piuze argues that the $2.25 million he paid McCord was appropriate because the fee-sharing agreement the two men had didn't cover appellate work.

The two men represented Penny Shipler, who was paralyzed from the mid-chest down after an accident when she was riding in a Chevrolet Blazer. The roof of the Blazer crushed the 30-year-old woman when the vehicle rolled on the northwest outskirts of Lincoln in September 1997.

Shipler sued GM and the Blazer's driver, Kenneth Long of Lincoln, in 2000.

Shipler won a multimillion-dollar judgment against GM in 2003 that the Nebraska Supreme Court later upheld. That led to the $22.5 million settlement.

Shipler and her son moved away from Nebraska in 2006, and McCord sued Piuze over the fees.

The lawyers' dispute is in front of a jury this week. Previously, a Lancaster County judge ruled in McCord's favor without a trial. But that earlier decision in the case was rejected on appeal.

Piuze's attorney, Peter Ezzell of Los Angeles, said McCord didn't do the majority of the work, so he doesn't deserve a larger fee. Plus, the contract McCord signed specifically excluded appeal work.

McCord said he was friends with Shipler before the crash, and he planned to follow the case however far it went. And, he said, Shipler wanted him to stay involved.

The case may hinge on whether McCord's appeal work helped Shipler's lawsuit even though he wasn't contracted to do that work.