Appeals Court: Breakaway Firm Not Part of Founders’ Arbitration of Disputed Fees With Drew Eckl & Farnham
Written by Thomas Spigolon | Apr 2, 2025 | Uncategorized | Print PDF
Two former Drew Eckl partners who founded Burke Moore Law Group are in a long-running dispute with their previous firm over contingency fees and compensation.
March 18, 2025 at 04:37 PM
5 minute read
What You Need to Know
- Georgia Court of Appeals has ruled an Atlanta business defense boutique should not be part of an arbitration that its two founders are participating in.
- The founders are in arbitration with their former firm as part of a dispute over compensation and fee-sharing.
The Georgia Court of Appeals has ruled an Atlanta business defense boutique should not be part of an arbitration that its two founders are participating in with their former firm as part of a dispute over compensation and fee-sharing.
In a ruling released Wednesday, Presiding Judge Anne Elizabeth Barnes wrote that a Fulton County Superior Court judge “committed legal error” in applying the doctrine of equitable estoppel in ruling that Burke Moore Law Group (BMLG) should be added to ongoing arbitration over claims that Atlanta midsize firm Drew Eckl & Farnham has against BMLG’s two founders.
The ruling by the three-judge panel—including Judges Elizabeth Gobeil and Trea Pipkin—also remands the case back to the trial court for more review.
Steven Hall of Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz, who is representing Drew Eckl in the case, said the law firm “is assessing whether it wants to pursue further appellate review or whether it will just proceed with the claims against BMLG in court.”
“Drew Eckl believes the opinion involves an important point of law regarding what happens when a party asks an arbitration panel to rule on whether it is subject to arbitration, gets a ruling it does not like and then goes to court seeking a different outcome,” Hall said.
Richard Robbins of Robbins Alloy Belinfante Littlefield, who is representing Burke, Moore and BMLG, said the case “is important for arbitration law in the state of Georgia.”
“We very much respect this arbitration panel, but we simply had a legal disagreement on this issue,” Robbins said. “We regret we had to have this legal disagreement in the arbitration.”
The Wednesday ruling covered two related appeals that stem from a dispute between Drew Eckl and former debt collections partners Paul Burke and Brian Moore over contingency fee-sharing and due compensation.
Burke worked for 38 years, and Moore 21 years, with Drew Eckl before departing in April 2022. Drew Eckl charged that the former partners had not paid it one-third of contingency fees from clients who continued working with them after they left—as required in a partnership agreement that also stated any disputes would automatically go to an arbitrator.
Burke and Moore countered that they had not received compensation they were due from Drew Eckl that also was part of the agreement. They said in a 2023 court filing that the dispute is a “death rattle of a once-great but now failing law firm” and said they were part of an “exodus” of lawyers from the firm due to inadequate compensation.
An American Arbitration Association (AAA) panel subsequently granted Drew Eckl’s motion to add BMLG as a party to the arbitration. BMLG then responded with a lawsuit in Fulton County Superior Court seeking “a declaration that it had no obligations” under the partnership agreement and “could not be required to participate in the arbitration.”
The court denied BMLG’s request and compelled it to arbitrate. Its ruling said the doctrine of equitable estoppel applied because the firm took over cases that Burke and Moore brought with them from Drew Eckl that were subject to arbitration—even though the BMLG firm had not agreed to be part of the arbitration.
The appeals court ruled that the Fulton trial court should not have required BMLG’s participation because the doctrine does not apply in this case where BMLG did not agree to be part of the arbitration.
Robbins said the appeals judges ruled Burke and Moore were subject to the agreement but not the firm, which includes six other partners. He said he did not know if the ruling would affect BMLG’s individual lawyers because he did not know the details of the firm’s compensation model.
He said on the issue of applying equitable estoppel to the Fulton court’s ruling, “we believed very strongly that we raised this objection to BMLG being added to the arbitration from the beginning.”
“We consistently voiced that objection at every opportunity in the arbitration and even said it was for the courts to decide,” Robbins said.
“It has been nearly three years since Paul Burke and Brian Moore left Drew Eckl,” he said. “Hopefully, the court’s opinion will lead to closure of this dispute soon so the parties can get back to focusing on the practice of law versus litigating with each other.
“Our clients tried to resolve the issues before they even left Drew Eckl, and they regret that their departure from Drew Eckl became so contentious,” he said. “It was never their intention to have this expensive and public dispute with a firm which they were with for years and hold in high regard.”
Hall said the Court of Appeals ruling “is not a decision on the substantive merits.”
“It is a limited ruling involving where the case against BMLG will be heard,” Hall said. “The claims against the individual lawyers remain pending before the AAA.”
The appeals court decision also is not a final decision on the motion to compel arbitration, he said.
“While the [appeals] court rejected the trial court’s reasoning that BMLG should be compelled to arbitrate on equitable estoppel grounds, it remanded the case for further analysis as to whether arbitration can or should be compelled under other theories,” Hall said.