Two legal fee bills, two outcomes Stearns Weaver paid, Schuhmacher denied

Two legal fee bills, two outcomes

Stearns Weaver paid, Schuhmacher denied

BY TERRY SCHMIDA

The final City Council meeting of 2015 was dominated by discussion of pay-outs for legal services rendered, but the outcomes were distinctly different.

In the event, the council voted 3 to 2 to deny a $1,500 claim by attorney Hal Schuhmacher’s $1,500 bill for representing former Mayor Mike Cinque, during an FBI probe into a murder-for-hire scheme involving a number of prominent locals.

But a much larger bill, for $57,287, did get paid, in another chapter of a legal dispute with the Hartford Casualty Insurance Company.

“We’re kind of stuck in limbo in this case,” Mayor Mark Senmartin said Wednesday morning. “This case goes way back to before I was on council, and it’s just dragging out longer and longer.”

In a nutshell, Hartford sued Marathon and a contractor, the Interstate Construction company, in August of 2010, over a 2009 wastewater project, in which the insurance company served as the surety.

Hartford lost, and the city then went after them for attorney fees and court costs. Marathon won that judgment, but Hartford has so-far refused to pay, digging in its heels and filing response after response to the court.

At the time of the initial suit, the city was utilizing the legal firm of Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson, P.A., at a rate of $250 per hour. Marathon has since segued through Vernis & Bowling of the Florida Keys, on its way to establishing its own legal department, under the tutelage of David Migut.

However, as the Hartford case drags, the city is stuck paying Stearns Weaver in the battle against the insurance giant.

“We received a judgment on July 31 from the federal court for $427,273 that Hartford was liable to us,” Migut said. “But Hartford is fighting this vehemently. It”s out of the ordinary. At the moment, we’re seeking a little over $950,000 in attorney fees and about $130,000 in court costs.”

What this means is that until the case is fully resolved, Marathon is stuck paying Stearns Weaver for services rendered, at a rate of $200 per hour for attorneys, and $120 per hour for paralegal fees.

And there is currently no end in sight, since Hartford on Nov. 6 filed a motion to present yet another reply in the matter, before Judge Lawrence King, of the Southern District of Florida.

No further hearings are currently scheduled, according to Migut.

And the five members of the council agreed unanimously that now is no time to drop out of a case involving over $1 million in costs, in which the city has already been handed a partial victory.

But that’s where the agreement ended at the Dec. 15 council meeting, as the council was split as much on the issue of Schuhmacher’s fees, as the precedent that paying them would create.

“If I were to get a phone call from the FBI tomorrow, I’d grab Mr. Migut and we’d go talk to them,” Senmartin said at the time. “And if the conversation turns into, ‘Hey buddy, you better get a lawyer,’ then that interview stops.”

Council member John Bartus, for his part, worried that the city was potentially throwing its own employees under the bus.

“I hate to think we’re going to leave people hanging high and dry every time somebody comes knocking with a lawsuit or investigation,” he said.