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Article
Courtesy of The Palm Beach Post
By JASON
SCHULTZ
Published
September 18, 2009
A
West Palm Beach woman said she was victimized by BellSouth when she worked
for the phone company, and then after she sued the phone company she was
victimized again by her own attorneys, who messed up her case and hid the
mistake from her until it was too late.
But a Circuit Court jury on Wednesday said her former attorneys, the
powerful Florida law firm Becker & Poliakoff, must pay her $4.5
million for their mistake.
"I just said to myself 'Thank you God because you are the only one I
have to thank.'" Jackie Young said after hearing the jury verdict in
her favor Wednesday. "After all that I've been through I never
thought I'd be standing in this place."
Young was one of 54 employees who sued BellSouth in the 1990s alleging
racial discrimination against black employees. Eventually a judge
dismissed Young's suit in September of 2001 because of errors in the
lawsuit filed by her attorneys, Becker & Poliakoff, according to the
complaint she later filed against that law firm.
Becker & Poliakoff, based in Fort Lauderdale
, was founded in 1973 and now has more than 100 attorneys and
offices across Florida as well as the Bahamas, France, Israel and the
Czech Republic, according to the firm's Web site.
The firm did not tell Young that her case had been thrown out until
October of 2002. By then it was too late for Young to fix the problems in
the suit and refile it so her claim against BellSouth was permanently
dismissed with no avenue to appeal in the future, according to Young's
attorney, Craig Zobel.
Zobel said the fact that it took a year for Young's attorneys to tell her
about the case being dismissed was not a simple oversight.
During that time they settled the overall class action lawsuit with
BellSouth and collected their $2.9 million in attorney's fees. Young said
that if she had known how her attorneys had messed up her case, she would
have told other plaintiffs to drop Becker & Poliakoff as their
attorneys and the case would not have been settled.
"They were chasing a lot of money and they let her slip through the
cracks," Zobel said.
Young, who eventually retired from BellSouth and now works for Palm Beach
Atlantic University, said what hurts the worst was that the law firm has
never apologized to her for the mistake.
"It was like I was nothing, like a piece of trash they threw under
the bus," Young said.
The senior partner at the firm, Alan Becker, issued a statement after the
verdict saying it was the fault of the specific lawyer who handled the
case, Thomas Romero, not the law firm.
Becker said Romero was a "rogue lawyer who filed this case without
authority and contrary to his supervisor's clear direction. Unbeknownst to
the firm and his colleagues, the case was filed and dismissed due to his
error. Mr. Romeo purposely hid that information from all parties."
Becker said Romero was later fired from the law firm and disbarred.
"We disagree with the verdict blaming the firm for Mr. Romeo's rogue
behavior and we believe the damages are excessive," Becker said in
his statement. "We will appeal."
Young, said the $4.5 million jury award is still surreal to her and she
has not thought about how this will change her life.
"I am just relieved this is all over," she said.
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