Law firm ordered to pay bottlers $10.8 million

In a closely watched case in the legal ethics community a verdict was brought in late today in the case pitting three small bottling companies against the lawyer that originally represented them in litigation.

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 The litigation found that lawyers from Hagans Berman violated their duty of loyalty to their clients who were on the verge of settling litigation against Nestle Waters North America, the owner of Poland Springs water back in 2003.  The allegation was that the attorney's rejected a $39 million dollar settlement in order to go file class action cases in 5 other states that were potentially more lucrative.

The case has marquee value in that it pitted Attorney Jan Schlichtmann against his former partner Thomas Sobol, who is one of the nations leading class action attorneys, and who won a major tobacco settlement for the states of NH, MA and RI. While the personalities were the draw, the larger issue of client duty and ethics was the substance of the case. We will report more on this later this week.