ARDC Complaint about Attorneys Philip Nathe, Richard Adler

If you have any questions about this document, you can email me at jeffrey@ebenner.com, or call me at (312) 520-0090. For legal reasons however I cannot probably give you any advice about these men, other than to read this and carefully judge for yourself.

Date of complaint: February 8, 2000

Complaint made by: Jeffrey Benner, 18851 Kings Road, Homewood, IL 60430-4111; phone 312-520-0090

Summary: I am complaining that Philip Nathe and Richard Adler, both attorneys practicing in DuPage County, Illinois and retained by me to represent me in DuPage County, willfully mislead me in 1999 about their fees. They further substituted counsel in the case without giving me advance notice that this was possible. They also had a financial arrangement between each other which, illegally, was not disclosed to me, their client and remains undisclosed to this day. Finally, I feel that Mr. Nathe has charged me a higher billing rate than what he initially disclosed to me, and could not have worked the hours on the case for which he is billing me.

My name is Jeffrey Benner. I am 37 years old, and live in Homewood, Illinois. Due to my wife's perjury to a police officer in Fall 1999, I needed to find a criminal attorney to represent me in DuPage County.

I asked another attorney (to remain unnamed in this document) for a recommendation to represent me in a DuPage County criminal matter. He recommended Mr. Dick Adler, who he felt was a good guy and who lives in the referring attorney's home community. I called Mr. Adler on September 18^th, 1999 and left a message to have him call me back. He called me back rather late that evening (a habit which would continue throughout our brief relationship) and arranged to meet me on September 21^st at 8:00 p.m. at a McDonalds in a strip mall in Glenview, Illinois.

I met Mr. Adler, alone, at the McDonalds. I explained to him my situation and what I needed him to help me with. I did not ask him what his hourly rate was, or what his fee requirements were. Instead he volunteered that "this kind of case" "could cost" as much as $5000, and asked me how much I could afford to pay for his services. At the time my only experience was with civil suit lawyers in Cook County, who charge an hourly rate with an initial retainer. He at no time clearly stated that he worked on a flat fee basis (which I had never even heard of at that time), so I assumed based upon my prior experience that he was being flexible in asking for an initial retainer.

I told him I could give him $1000 but no more. I certainly would not have agreed to $5000 (which is what high profile divorce attorneys in Cook County ask for as a retainer, a much more involved affair), and found it very unlikely that hourly billables on this kind of case would reach anywhere near that high. I thought a $1000 retainer was reasonable however on an hourly basis. I felt the $5000 statement was a bargaining position. My experience is that attorneys are usually far more flexible in their fees than they reveal in the initial meeting with a client.

Mr. Adler stated that the $1000 check was acceptable, so that night I wrote him a check, # 3829 dated 9-21-99, posted 9-28-99, drawn on my bank account, to his name.

We then parted ways that evening. That would turn out to be the last time that I met Mr. Adler in person. In fact throughout the entire period of this incident I would both never see him and never receive any correspondence from Mr. Adler, or any paper evidence of our relationship aside from the cashed check.

The next day, September 22^nd, Mr. Adler called me. Even though I wrote my initial retainer check out to Mr. Adler, he indicated that he was not going to directly represent me. He stated he was "giving my case" to "one of his associates", Mr. Philip Nathe. I had never heard of Mr. Nathe, and Mr. Nathe’s name had never been mentioned in the previous evening’s conversation.

I assumed at the time that Mr. Nathe was a junior member of Mr. Adler’s law firm, and proceeded to contact Nathe, meeting him on September 23^rd at 7:00 a.m. I would meet with Mr. Nathe several times, both at his office and in court. He wrote me a letter September 23^rd confirming that he was representing me in court, and stating "It is my understanding that you have reached an agreement with Dick Adler regarding the fees in this matter."

He made no other mention during my initial meeting of fees so I assumed once again that this was going to be charged as an hourly rate with a $1000 retainer. This suspicion was confirmed for me when briefly after my first meeting with Mr. Nathe I received a billing statement from Mr. Nathe referring to my case as the "Dick Adler Case" and stating that his hourly rate was $105/hour, and that there was no balance due. This statement was dated 9/21/99, the date when I met Mr. Adler, not the date when I met Mr. Nathe. I received this however from Mr. Nathe’s office on his stationary.

During the initial meeting Mr. Nathe said nothing about his relationship with Mr. Adler, or about his fee requirements. I had never given any explicit approval to Mr. Adler to farm out the case to another attorney, but assumed all the time that they were in the same firm and that I was being represented by a firm led by Mr. Adler to which Mr. Nathe belonged.

Mr. Nathe appeared in court on October 6^th on my behalf. I received correspondence from Mr. Nathe on October 20, 1999 stating that the case was set down for trial December 1^st. In the last paragraph of the letter he stated "And lastly, please use your best efforts in paying the balance of your fees." I did not pay much attention to this sentence, as I had not heard from Mr. Adler since September 22^nd and Mr. Nathe did not send me an updated billing statement showing that I owed him anything. I assumed that when I had a balance due on the $1000 they would send me a bill, but I never received any bill from either attorney. I also felt it was unlikely that my billable hours had exceeded my retainer, because Mr. Nathe had only put in a couple of hours on the case so far.

I never called Mr. Nathe about what he meant by that sentence in the letter, because I felt he had probably made some kind of mistake and left it at that. He had never made any kind of comment to me regarding fee problems.

Mr. Nathe appeared with me in court on December 1^st, 1999. Once again he said nothing about there being any problem with fees.

The relationship between Mr. Adler, Mr. Nathe and me broke down on December 5^th, 1999. On this Sunday night I received a call at home from Mr. Adler at 9:30 p.m. I was surprised to hear from him at such an odd time, which even without knowing what he was calling about initially offended me.

I asked him how I could help him, reminding him immediately that this was my family time and not a good time to talk. He said that this was important, that "he was surprised to hear that I had not been keeping up with my fee payments." I told Mr. Adler that I had no idea what he was talking about. I said I had not received any billing statement showing amount due, so I did not at this time owe anyone any money. Mr. Adler stated that he did not work on an hourly basis, and that I would receive no billing statement showing hours worked. That to me was immediately suspicious, as I believed, and continue to believe, that every client has the right to see the hours his lawyer has worked on his case, upon demand.

I told Mr. Adler to send me a billing statement showing amount due when my $1000 retainer was exceeded. Mr. Adler stated that he had never had any objection to his fees, which he still was not clearly stating, by any client "except for a couple of wise guys" (by which I assumed he meant professional criminals). I told him I did not care about his relationship with other clients; that I was paying for a service and I did not think I had any objective evidence I yet owed them any money.

At that point I asked him how much money he felt he required for me to be represented by Mr. Nathe and Mr. Adler. Mr. Adler refused to state how much, instead asking me how much I could send. I then said, if I sent him money, how much would be enough? If I sent him $1000, would that be enough? He said no. I then said, sarcastically, if I sent him $5000, would that be enough? He said that would indeed be enough. But my question was rhetorical, because I in no way regarded their services as worth $5000.

In fact Mr. Adler would not guarantee the relationship or commit it to paper, so I felt that sending him more money under those circumstances was a black hole. If I sent him money, when I had no clear statement of their fees and relationship, the demands for money might never end. And even if they were willing to commit to a fee arrangement on paper, I felt blindsided, because if I had known about these demands up front I could have shopped around for an attorney who would be competitively priced. I felt there was something inherently dishonest about this about-face several months into the case.

Mr. Adler stated that he was going out of town on Tuesday December 7^th, and so this had to be resolved by then. At that point, very upset with Mr. Adler, I told him I was not working with him on other than an hourly basis, and hung up.

On Monday September 6^th, 1999, during the day, Mr. Nathe called me on my cell phone. He stated that he understood that I was having a fee disagreement with Mr. Adler. I told him that was a correct understanding of the situation. Mr. Nathe then proceeded to floor me by stating that he had in fact received no money at all from Mr. Adler. He was not sure he was ever going to be receiving any money from Mr. Adler.

I told Mr. Nathe that I thought he and Mr. Adler were members of the same firm. Mr. Nathe said they in fact had no formal business relationship. I asked Mr. Nathe how he expected me to believe that they had no formal relationship when Mr. Nathe had just performed substantial work on my behalf without receiving a penny from Mr. Adler. How much was Mr. Nathe going to receive, and when?

Mr. Nathe did not answer that question, or other questions directed to him about how much he expected to get paid by Mr. Adler, and how he expected to be paid. Instead he proceeded to tell me that from now on he would need to be paid directly by me in order to continue to be represented. He stated to me (for the first time!) that he worked on a flat rate of $2500 for this kind of charge. He said he would need $1500 from me right away, and would wait until he saw whether Mr. Adler was going to transfer the $1000 to him. He stated also that there was a possibility that I would have to pay Mr. Nathe an additional $1000 if Mr. Adler ended up keeping the money. He further stated that my relationship with Mr. Adler was my own problem and that he was not going to be able to intercede to obtain the money from Mr. Adler.

I ended the conversation by stating that I regarded Mr. Nathe as having a clear relationship with Mr. Adler, and that any problems which affected the one would not escape the other. I also stated to him that the flat fee arrangement he just proposed was in fact a new arrangement, and that you cannot radically change the fee structure in mid-representation. Further, I told him that I did not think he was telling me the truth regarding his arrangements with Mr. Adler.

I really felt at the time that Mr. Nathe and Mr. Adler were playing good cop/bad cop games with me. Their stories were implausible and cast blame on the other party, claiming innocence on their own behalf.

I called Mr. Adler and left a message with his answering service that he was to immediately transfer the $1000 to Mr. Nathe. I told him he had not performed any services on my behalf so he had no right to be holding onto that money.

That night, on December 6^th, at home Mr. Adler called me and asked me again what I wanted to do. I repeated that my relationship with him was over and I wanted the $1000 given to Mr. Nathe. He asked whether he could keep a referral fee. I said no he could not.

On December 7^th I called Mr. Nathe and told him I did not feel he was behaving ethically or legally in his relationship with Mr. Adler, and told him I was not going to change the fee arrangements that seemed so clear at the onset of this case – that this was hourly with retainer. Mr. Nathe said he could not work under those circumstances and would withdraw from the case.

I told him I expected to be reimbursed for the amount of the $1000 that he had not yet earned. He said he expected to be paid for the time he had put in on the case.

On December 21^st or soon thereafter I received Mr. Nathe’s correspondence enclosing "Notice of withdrawal" and "Motion to Withdraw as Attorney of Record." Under consultation with my Cook County attorney, I decided not to oppose his motion to withdraw, but resolved instead to find new counsel and to file an ARDC complaint against Mr. Nathe and Mr. Adler.

Finally, as my attached letter of February 3^rd states, on Page 2 of the December 21^st correspondence Mr. Nathe calculates his final billable hours on the case at $175/hour, which is $70/hour more than his documented rate of $105/hour. Also, I feel the time billed at court appearances is excessive. As I state in my letter:

This concludes my complaint against Dick Adler and Philip Nathe.

What I know about Dick Adler and Philip Nathe about their name, address, etc.:

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(last updated date: 06/07/2000)
© 2000 by Jeffrey Benner