ParfumGigi@aol.com

25 janvier, 2008 16:51

Billy Shields

Daily Business Review

01-25-2008

Embattled lawyer Jay Wingate agreed Thursday to drop out of 77 shipboard injury cases after Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines claimed his firm paid a cruise employee for inside information. Wingate said he is closing his practice, but the future of the cases is uncertain.

The Miami-based cruise company filed a motion two weeks ago to disqualify Wingate's law firm from pursuing the lawsuits against it. An attached affidavit from a fired Royal Caribbean employee said she accepted cash from two Wingate investigators in exchange for information about lawsuit settlement authorization, including the amount of money the cruise operator was willing to pay to settle cases.

At a hearing Thursday before Senior Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Herb Stettin, Wingate's attorney Miles A. McGrane III of McGrane Nosich & Ganz in Coral Gables announced Wingate would withdraw as counsel from the pending cases.

Royal Caribbean attorney Curtis Mase, a partner with Mase & Lara in Miami, requested a brief recess and returned to relay his client's elation."They are quite surprised and amenable," he said.

The fired employee's name was blacked out in the court filing, but the Daily Business Review obtained an unredacted copy identifying her as Wanda Ballestas, a former supervisor for crew claims in the company's risk management department. Ballestas acknowledged accepting a series of $500 payments for Royal Caribbean's confidential settlement projections and a $2,000 Christmas bonus, according to the affidavit. She admitted passing information on 20 plaintiffs to Wingate investigators Maria Elena Parilla and Nelson Ayala.

Wingate and McGrane vigorously denied Ballestas' claims at the hearing and said dropping out of the cases was not an admission of wrongdoing.

But the convoluted legal saga did not end with Wingate's withdrawal from the cases.

Peter Sotolongo, a partner in The Wingate Firm, said in an interview that he is starting his own firm and hopes to take over many of the cases against Royal Caribbean. Although he was named in Royal Caribbean's motion to disqualify, Sotolongo came into the hearing expecting he would be in line to take over the bulk of the cases the firm was dropping. But the potential hiring of another firm to help those clients was a setback to that effort.

Royal Caribbean would oppose Sotolongo taking on the remaining cases, Mase said. "If Peter Sotolongo comes to represent any of these plaintiffs, then at that time Royal Caribbean will take the action that they deem to be appropriate," he said. "I think it's probably fair to say that Royal Caribbean would oppose someone who was an attorney in the firm, a very small firm I might add, which is alleged to have engaged in improper conduct."

McGrane announced in the hearing that Christopher J. Lynch of Hunter Williams & Lynch in Coral Gables would act as a third party to help Wingate's former clients find another lawyer.

McGrane said Lynch could take some of the cases. Lynch's firm specializes in personal injury, premises liability and wrongful death cases. "This is the best way to resolve this for everybody involved," McGrane, a former president of The Florida Bar, said in an interview. "No one knows legal ethics better than me. If we fought this, we would have prevailed, but at what cost?"

Robert Fiore, Sotolongo's attorney, strongly disagreed with McGrane's plan to bring in Lynch's firm. "I have never heard in over 21 years of active trial practice of a third-party law firm writing a letter for all the clients," he said during a recess. Fiore is a former president of the Dade County Bar Association and a Miami solo practitioner. "I don't think it's in the parameters of the Bar rules."

Stettin told both Wingate and Sotolongo to work out between them how Wingate's old clients would find new counsel. They are expected to negotiate over the next several days on the mechanics of transferring Wingate's clients. The issue may end up before Stettin if the two parties cannot agree, the judge said Thursday.

Wingate has been no stranger to controversy. He was an associate of the late William Huggett, who died of a stroke in August 2004. Wingate, 63, took over the late lawyer's practice following a drawn-out pair of lawsuits involving Huggett's widow, Jacqueline.

Jacqueline Huggett filed two lawsuits against Wingate and his firm in 2004 and 2005. Jacqueline Huggett accused Wingate of manipulating her in her time of grief and using his dual position as inventory attorney and associate to loot the firm of money and about 100 of the firm's clients.

The case against Wingate personally settled confidentially in 2006. The case against the Wingate law firm and 10 employees has been partially resolved, with settlements reached with the firm and two employees. No resolution has been achieved with seven Huggett employees, including Ayala, Parilla and Sara San Martin. A few of the Royal Caribbean cases in Wingate's portfolio, mostly crew injury claims, had been filed by Huggett.

San Martin, the firm's former bookkeeper, is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 1 by U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan in Miami after pleading guilty to fraud. She was accused of writing fraudulent checks on Huggett's accounts after he died.

After the hearing, Wingate said he was heading into semi-retirement, closing his firm and transferring all of his cases including about 15 to 20 other open files. "The entire thrust of what went on today was to protect my clients. With all the distractions here, it was just going to be impossible to [litigate] effectively for them," he said in an interview. Wingate plans to keep his law license current but effectively stop litigating. "I think I'm about ready to take life a little easier and start doing the things I want to do," he said.