(Miami Herald) - A former client in a divorce is suing a prominent Miami family law attorney and her law firm, alleging the lawyer’s legal malpractice, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty cost the former client $1.1 million.
But, attorneys representing former Florida Bar President Dori Foster-Morales say Lourdes Castillo’s Oct. 15 lawsuit is merely a bad reaction to the Foster-Morales law firm’s Sept. 4 lawsuit over attorney’s fees owed by Castillo.
“Ms. Castillo owes Ms. Foster-Morales’ firm a lot of money,” said Alex Diaz and Rob Klein of Freeman Mathis & Gary in an email to the Herald. “Multiple efforts were made to have Ms. Castillo honor her obligations to no avail. Ultimately, the firm was required to initiate an action to compel arbitration. “In response, rather than simply pay the monies she promised to pay, Ms. Castillo instead elected to bring a contrived lawsuit against Ms. Foster-Morales that is nothing other than retribution and an attempt to obtain leverage.”
Foster-Morales, 60, passed the Florida Bar in 1990 and has a clean disciplinary record. She is the wife of Jimmy Morales, Miami-Dade County’s chief operations officer and former Miami Beach city manager.
William A. Brewer III, partner at the firm representing Castillo, Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors, noted the “defendants do not appear to dispute any of the claims and allegations against them – choosing instead to peddle a false narrative about fee arrangements involving a former client. Ms. Castillo is shocked by the conduct and the notion that a law firm would so blatantly disregard its professional obligations.”
HOME FOR SALE
Castillo’s lawsuit, filed by William Ford of Brewer Attorneys, says her divorce was going along smoothly until the selling of the jointly-owned home hit a snag.
In early 2022, the real estate agent whom Castillo and her ex-husband had agreed upon recommended they drop the home’s asking price. Castillo’s ex-husband didn’t want to do that, so Castillo filed a motion in February 2022 to get a court to compel the home’s sale.
Between then and the hearing on the matter set for September, Castillo hired Foster-Morales. Her lawsuit says she was looking for “experienced, aggressive litigators capable of handling the increasingly acrimonious proceedings with her Former Husband.”
Foster-Morales took on Castillo as a client “for the explicit purpose of selling the Marital Residence and fully concluding the divorce proceedings as quickly and efficiently as possible,” the suit said.
“The complaint says it all: when our client’s divorce proceedings became complex and contentious, she retained defendants to protect her interests,” Brewer said. “Unfortunately, defendants were regularly unprepared for key court and arbitration events, caused Ms. Castillo to unwittingly waive substantial rights, and abandoned her during the most important time of her life.”
The lawsuit also accuses Foster-Morales of not properly addressing conflicts initiated by Castillo’s ex-husband’s side, overbilling and, among other failures, refusing to deal with a time-sensitive problem because Foster-Morales was out of the United States on vacation.
Foster-Morales and the firm’s “failure to represent Castillo is obvious from the underlying record — from September 2022 through April 2023, for over 220 days, (they) did not make a single filing on the underlying record. All the while, Castillo’s financial and legal positions continued to needlessly deteriorate.”
Also, the lawsuit claims Foster-Morales pressured Castillo to sign an amended marital separation agreement by threatening to dump her as a client on the eve of an important hearing and did the same thing to get Castillo to accept a lowball buyout of her interest in the home. While Castillo did the former, she rejected the latter and Foster-Morales filed a motion to withdraw on Nov. 10, 2023.
The lawsuit claims Aislynn Thomas-McDonald, Castillo’s original attorney in the divorce, returned and “secured a global settlement of all claims and the entire divorce proceedings for nearly $1 million dollars more than (Foster-Morales and her firm) attempted to compel and coerce Castillo to accept.”
By David J. Neal
October 31, 2024
