Georgia: Discharged Attorney Due $17,180 on Quantum Meruit Basis

Where Georgia’s State Board of Workers’ Compensation determined that a fee contract with an injured worker’s former counsel was unenforceable—the attorney was discharged before the final resolution of the case—it was nevertheless appropriate for the Board to award the discharged attorney a reasonable fee on a quantum meruit basis. The court noted that the discharged attorney had represented the client in the workers’ compensation matter for more than six years and that ultimately, when the case was finally settled, the settlement agreement called for the payment of $50,000 in attorney’s fees. The Board acknowledged that the parties failed to reach a meeting of the minds under the fee contract as to any hourly rates payable or as to the amount of any recovery in the event that the fee contract's contingency did not occur, so the fee contract was unenforceable. The attorney was still due a fee on a quantum meruit basis.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Law Offices of Jorge Luis Flores, LLC v. Cruz & Assocs., 2018 Ga. App. LEXIS 32 (Jan. 29, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 133.03.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law