FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Lawyers for the families of the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting want a federal judge to step in and settle who is entitled to the biggest payout from a recent $127.5 million settlement with the FBI.
But the dispute is not about the victims. It’s all about the attorneys and their legal fees.
A recent motion in the case asks Federal Judge William P. Dimitrouleas to remove the Miami firm of Podhurst Orseck as lead counsel for plaintiffs in the case, in which a settlement agreement was announced last month.
The reason, according to the motion, has to do with Podhurst Orseck’s “recent surprise motion for a 10% fee to be taxed against the $127.5 settlement puts them in conflict with all but one other plaintiffs’ counsel.”
The request would have no direct effect on how much each victim’s family would take home; only on how the attorneys’ fees are divvied up. Lawyers for 10 law firms representing more than 35 clients are part of the FBI lawsuit. Each family made its own agreement on attorneys’ fees.
“No prior agreement had been reached on such a fee,” the other attorneys wrote. “No order had been entered entitling Podhurst to any such fee.”
The attorneys on the case for Podhurst were not immediately available to comment. A telephone message was left early Friday afternoon. Among the clients represented by the firm are Fred and Jennifer Guttenberg, whose daughter, Jaime, was among the slain.
Victims’ families praised the FBI last month for accepting responsibility for its failure to stop the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in which gunman Nikolas Cruz killed 17, physically injured 17 more and traumatized scores of others.
Cruz pleaded guilty to the murders and attempted murders last month. Early next year he will face a jury to determine whether he is sentenced to death.
An FBI tip line received a call about five weeks before the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting, warning that Cruz, a former Stoneman Douglas student, Nikolas Cruz, was planning to shoot up a school.
That information was never forwarded to the FBI’s South Florida office.
The Podhurst Orseck firm took a leading role in arranging the settlement, as other firms took the lead on other aspects of the case, including a lawsuit in state court against the Broward School Board. That lawsuit has also been settled, but Brill & Rinaldi, the Weston firm that took the lead on the school lawsuit, did not ask for a larger share of the $26 million settlement.
“We would never even contemplate doing such a thing,” said David Brill, whose clients include Andrew Pollack, who lost his daughter Meadow in the mass shooting. “It is despicable. Being lead was an honor and gratifying enough.”
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