As the old saying goes, a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. That seems to be exactly what happened to Thomas Beck, a California lawyer who has spent the past five years litigating a dispute over $300 in wages owed to Anthony Stratton, his former paralegal, a sum that later ballooned into more than $100,000 and a precedential opinion on appellate attorneys fees, to boot.
Way back in November 2013, Stratton quit his job at Beck’s firm after just two months, while Beck was out of town. Beck later called in Stratton’s final working hours with the firm to payroll company ADP, totaling $1,075. For some unexplained reason, Stratton was only paid $771.45, so he filed a complaint with the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement over the missing $303.50 that he was due. He was eventually awarded the $303.50 he was owed, plus interest and penalties, which brought the grand total Beck owed him to about $6,000. That was when Beck began a catastrophic series of appeals that landed him in the hole for six figures.
The Recorder has the details on the filing error that wound up costing him dearly:
Beck appealed [the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement’s] decision to Los Angeles Superior Court, but in doing so, made a crucial mistake. He did not file the civil case cover sheet required for all civil cases—the form on which a party indicates whether a civil case is limited or unlimited. That led to multiple findings that the case was unlimited, meaning the trial court and appellate court had jurisdiction and attorneys fees were fair game.
In its first opinion on this case, the Second District of the California Court of Appeal wrote that “the parties are to bear their own costs of appeal,” which Beck took to mean that appellate attorneys fees were off the table. In its second — and precedential — opinon on this case, Justice Audrey Collins wrote in seeming disbelief, “This case began as a dispute over approximately $300 in unpaid wages. It has since transmogrified into a dispute concerning attorney fees totaling nearly 200 times that amount.” The Second District then found that the attorneys fees were a separate issue from costs and that an employee was entitled to them by statute.
As noted by California Labor Commissioner Julie Su, “Beck could have paid his paralegal the $300 in wages owed. By not doing so even after my office found that the wages were owed and instead making unwarranted challenges to the Labor Commissioner’s decision, he now owes more than $100,000.”
After half a decade of litigation, Beck is officially giving up on this lost cause of a case. “I’m sorry about the anxiety this has cost me, and the financial cost is overwhelming,” he said. “I didn’t really want to bring ADP into it although I probably should have. I never thought this would get to the point that it would cost me $100,000.”
Thankfully, Beck realized the error of his ways: “I made the mistake of representing myself.” Please don’t let Beck’s mistake become your own.
‘I Made The Mistake of Representing Myself’: Attorney Gives Up Years-Long Fight Over $300 [The Recorder]
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
The $100K Paralegal: Lawyer Winds Up Paying Six Figures Over $300 Dispute With Former Employee curated from Above the Law
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