Gregory Shamoun’s epic fight with the late Al Hill Jr. over $7.25 million in legal fees will return to square one after the Texas Supreme Court ruled last week that a legal expert’s support for his claim was legally insufficient.
Although the court acknowledged Shamoun and his firm, Shamoun & Norman, had helped Hill reach a global settlement in a variety of lawsuits filed against him, the court returned the case to the lower court for retrial.
In a two-week trial in 2013, a Dallas County jury awarded Shamoun $7.25 million in legal fees for his work in settling the lawsuits against Hill. But at a post-trial hearing, Hill’s lawyers argued that the award, which they claimed amounted to $48,000 per hour, was excessive and the trial judge agreed.
In 2016, the Dallas Court of Appeals reinstated the jury verdict and Hill appealed to the Texas Supreme Court.
In a 33-page ruling written by Justice Paul Green, the state’s High Court ruled that the original jury award was based largely on testimony by Dallas litigator Dick Sayles, who appeared as Shamoun’s expert on lawyer compensation.
Citing its decision in the 2007 case, Quigley v. Bennett, the Supreme Court ruled Quigley “requires us to exclude the entirety of Sayles’s opinion as to the reasonable value of S&N’s services.” Although Sayles’ analysis was defensible under standards set by the court, Sayles had acknowledged in court that his final opinion was based on an unwritten and contested contingent-fee arrangement between Shamoun and Hill.
“Because there is some evidence of the reasonable value of the firm’s services, we reverse the part of the court of appeals’ judgment that reinstated the jury’s award and remand the case to the trial court for a new trial on the amount of the firm’s recovery,” the justices wrote.
For over a decade, Hill – who died in December – had been in a “spider web of litigation” against his son, Al Hill III. The 20-plus lawsuits of the litigation web involve other members of the Hill family, family trusts, trustees, various parties and entities, as well as around 100 lawyers.
The settlement Shamoun worked on resolved many of the lawsuits and gave Hill Jr. exclusive control of a $1 billion family trust.
According to the opinion, Shamoun and Hill Jr. orally discussed a contingency fee agreement multiple times in which Shamoun would receive a large bonus if he obtained a favorable settlement amount for Hill Jr. But when a written agreement was presented to Hill, he refused to sign it and fired Shamoun.
The opinion says there is “disputed testimony” as to who should be credited for securing the $40 million settlement. Hill Jr. claims it should go to two other lawyers he hired after Shamoun, as they were lead settlement counsel when the settlement documents were actually signed. Other attorneys involved in the litigation testified that certain terms Shamoun proposed earlier in the settlement talks made it to the agreement the parties reached on May 5, 2010.
Shamoun sent a demand letter to Hill Jr. in August 2010 for $11.25 million, which sparked this current case.
The ruling was a win for former Gibson & Dunn partner James Ho, who appeared for Hill at oral arguments last October. Ho has since been named and confirmed as a judge on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Texas-Supreme-Court-Chief-Justice-turned-private-practice-appellate-lawyer Wallace B. Jefferson represented Shamoun.
Justice Eva Guzman did not participate in the decision.
The case is Albert G. Hill Jr. v. Shamoun & Norman LLP.