Two of Chicago's top personal injury law firms will square off in court over millions of dollars in legal fees, as the firm of Salvi Schostok & Pritchard seeks a court order blocking the firm formerly known as Wise Morrissey from taking half of the fees from cases the Salvi says they fairly grabbed amid a public squabble between the two principals of the Wise Morrissey firm.
The Salvi Schostok firm filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court on Nov. 3 against Wise Morrissey LLC and its former principal attorneys, David Wise and Francis Morrissey.
Wise and Morrissey publicly fell out in 2023, when Morrissey sued Wise in Cook County court after more than two decades in business together. According to information supplied by Wise, that firm had obtained more than $1 billion in settlements from personal injury lawsuits, under claims for medical malpractice, product liability, and construction and transportation injuries.
Patrick Salvi, managing equity partner & chairman
| Salvi Schostok & Pritchard
However, in recent years, the relationship between Morrissey and Wise appeared to have quickly degraded.
Morrissey accused Wise of conspiring with another attorney to conceal a multi-million dollar settlement from him, allegedly costing him his share of a $5 million legal fee coming to the firm.
Wise, in turn, sued Morrissey, asserting the lawsuit was filed maliciously to distract from Morrissey's alleged personal and professional failures, including several allegedly embarrassing personal incidents.
After simmering in court for several months, Wise and Morrissey reached a settlement to end the litigation. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The settlement was approved by a Cook County judge in mid-October.
Under the settlement, the Wise Morrissey firm officially became the Wise Law Offices. Morrissey would practice law through the Morrissey Legal Group LLC.
In the preceding months, however, the Salvi Schostok firm said 21 medical malpractice clients that had been represented by Wise Morrissey agreed to move their cases to the Salvi firm, amid the ongoing dispute between Wise and Morrissey.
According to online information, the Salvi Schostok firm has secured more than $2 billion in verdicts and settlements in personal injury cases and other tort actions since it was founded in 1982.
According to the lawsuit, the clients who migrated their cases to the Salvi firm were all represented by attorney David Rashid, who resigned from the Wise Morrissey firm in February 2023 and moved to the Salvi Schostok firm.
According to the complaint, the Salvi firm has since tried one of the cases to verdict and settled three more. The other 17 cases remain pending in court.
According to the complaint, Wise Morrissey has since allegedly claimed it should receive at least one third to half of everything the Salvi firm earns from those cases. According to the lawsuit, Wise Morrissey allegedly claims they are owed this sum under a "compensation memorandum" under which Rashid had allegedly worked at the Wise Morrissey firm since 2019.
According to the complaint, Wise Morrissey asserts it is owed this money by right under the agreement, without having to demonstrate how much work their firm had actually performed on those cases, saying their "compensation memorandum created an 'equity stake' or ownership interest for them in the clients' Cases."
The lawsuit asserts these alleged demands violate Illinois law and rules under which the legal profession operates in Illinois.
While Illinois law and rules allow lawyers to seek compensation for work done on behalf of former clients, such requests should be subject to the doctrine of quantum meruit, not flat fee demands under an alleged "equity stake" of ownership, the Salvi firm said.
"It is axiomatic that clients and their cases are not the property of lawyers to be traded, sold, or bartered," the Salvi firm wrote in its lawsuit. "Against this backdrop, the Defendants have attempted to do precisely that, boldly, and with no legal justification. It needs to end."
A spokesperson for the Wise Law Offices said in a prepared statement that the dispute centers entirely on Rashid's agreement with his former employer, which Wise alleged Rashid has refused to honor.
"We have been attempting to negotiate a resolution to this, but unfortunately, we have been unable to do so," Wise said in the statement. "On this matter, there was a difference of opinion too wide to bridge. So far, the Salvi firm has failed to reimburse us for any of our expenses relating to the cases in question. At this point, we welcome the filing and we are confident it will be resolved in our favor."
The Salvi firm is represented in the action by attorneys John F. Kennedy, Elizabeth E. Babbitt and T. Hudson Cross IV, of the firm of Taft Stettinius & Hollister, of Chicago.