By John Council Texas Lawyers Friday, February 9, 2007
In a surprising verdict, a jury in a Dallas federal court found that a former associate with Baron & Budd “deliberately lied” to three clients, awarding them $129,000 in damages on Feb. 8.The case was unusual because the three plaintiffs in Jacobs, et al. v William K. Tapscott Jr., et al. still are current Baron & Budd asbestos clients. Former associate Ken Tapscott recently left Baron & Budd after he was elected judge of Dallas County Court-at-Law No. 4.As U.S.

District Judge Sidney Fitzwater read the jury’s verdict in the case on Thursday evening, Tapscott laughed incredulously and shook his head. The jury found that Tapscott breached his fiduciary duty when he lied to his clients by telling them that all of the asbestos defendants they sued in 1996 had agreed to settle their case when in fact one defendant had not settled.”I did not deliberately lie to anyone,” Tapscott said as he left the Earle Cabell Federal Building.However, the jury found that Dallas-based Baron & Budd did not breach its fiduciary duty to them by abusing the powers of attorney in its employment agreements with the plaintiffs.

Robert Greenberg, a Dallas solo who represents defendants Tapscott and Baron & Budd, believes the jury was wrong and hopes Fitzwater will set aside the jurors’ decision by granting his directed verdict motion that is pending before the court.The plaintiffs are family members of Carl Jacobs, who died in 1996 at age 80 after he was diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma, a deadly lung disease associated with asbestos exposure. Widow Karin Jacobs and Carl’s daughters Patria Jacobs and JoeAnn Frost hired Baron & Budd in 1996 to pursue a wrongful-death case against numerous asbestos defendants.At the trial, which began on Feb. 5, the plaintiffs testified that Tapscott, who was the case manager in their wrongful-death suit, told them on June 1, 1999, that their case had settled for $2.5 million in a Galveston state district court.

They also testified that Tapscott failed to tell them that one of the defendants, the Pittsburgh Corning Corp., rescinded its settlement offer a day later.The plaintiffs testified that Tapscott’s failure to keep them informed about the problems with the settlement offer caused them to lose a trial date in the case and the ability to pursue a verdict against Pittsburgh Corning before the company filed for bankruptcy in 2000. The plaintiffs discovered they had not recovered as much money as they had been promised by Baron & Budd, and they claimed the firm was not responsive to their inquiries about the reasons for the shortfall.Baron & Budd is still pursuing claims against Pittsburgh Corning on behalf of the Jacobs family in a U.S. Bankruptcy Court, according to trial testimony.

Baron & Budd supervising lawyers and Tapscott denied during testimony that they lied to the plaintiffs. Instead, experts testifying for Baron & Budd said the Jacobs family received a reasonable recovery in their wrongful-death case and that therefore the family had not suffered any damages.”It is a just verdict,” Karin Jacobs said after the verdict. “It was the principle of the thing. It didn’t have anything to do with money. We were lied to.

Our phone calls weren’t returned and we had just had enough.”Jeff Lynch, a Dallas solo who represented the Jacobs family in their suit against Baron & Budd and Tapscott, says there is a lesson for lawyers from this litigation.
“You’ve got to be absolutely truthful, candid and straightforward and not hide or conceal anything from your client,” Lynch says. “That is the bottom line.”

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