Jury Orders Stratford Lawyer To Pay $1.4 Million To Former Client: Report

STRATFORD, CT — A Stratford lawyer has been ordered by a jury to pay $1.4 million to a former client, a Stratford woman, for spending more than $300,000 of her money that he was holding in a special account in a case that dates back to 1998, according to the Connecticut Post.

Daniel Tepfer of the Post reports the years of litigation began when the woman hired Laurence Parnoff to sue Bridgeport Hospital where she had worked as a nurse before she was fired after suffering a work-related injury.

The dispute began when she learned that her signed agreement with Parnoff, in which she agreed to give him 40 percent of any money won from the hospital, violated state law that caps contingency fees in civil cases at 33 percent, according to Tepfer.

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Parnoff, who is representing himself in the case and is expected to appeal, also awaits the judge’s decision on how much additional money he will need to pay after the jury decided punitive damages should be ordered in the case, Tepfer reports.

Parnoff had a conviction overturned by the state Appellate Court in 2015 related to a disorderly conduct charge in a 2011 incident in which he was accused of threatening to shoot two water company employees, who believed he was using a fire hydrant to provide water for his goats, if they didn’t get off his property.

Read more about this week’s jury decision at the Connecticut Post here.

Image via Shutterstock

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