By Aaron Miller-
Sexual predator, Bill Cosby in battling a firm of lawyers he hired to help him battle a string of sexual assault cases that landed him in jail.
Cosby, jailed for a string of sexual assaults in the 80’s, is challenging a California arbitration award that trims the $9 million bill from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan to below $7 million. The 81 year old former television star is accusing the firm of elder abuse and “egregious” billing practices, and fraud for representing both him and the insurance company he was battling in court, American International Group Inc., over his coverage.
The shamed former television icon is serving a three to 10-year prison term after he was convicted at a 2018 retrial near Philadelphia. He is appealing the conviction. His battle with lawyers over the large sums of fees charged has involved an arbitration panel.The arbitration panel concluded that Quinn Emanuel told Cosby’s personal lawyer and “general counsel,” Monique Pressley, of the potential conflict, but not the actor himself.
Pressley repudiated Cosby’s 2015 contract with the law firm that included $1 million retainer. However, the panel found the potential conflict never caused Cosby any harm, and the firm did solid work for Cosby.The Quinn Emanuel team was led by partner Christopher Tayback, the son of the late actor Vic Tayback. Quinn Emanuel lawyers charged about $500 to $1,000 an hour.
REFUNDS
Cosby wants refunds of the approximately $4.3 million he has paid the firm, while the arbitration panel ordered him to pay an additional $2.4 million, for a total of about $6.7 million.Cosby claims that his blindness and old age prevented him from understanding the scope of the work or other parts of the contract when he signed it in October 2015. The firm worked on the case, along with local lawyer Brian McMonagle and others, through Cosby’s arrest two months later and several key pretrial hearings.
Their professional relationship ended less than a year later, long before his first criminal trial in June 2017 or the April 2018 retrial when he was convicted of drugging and molesting a woman at his Philadelphia-area home in 2004.
The Quinn Emanuel team was among over a dozen lawyers brought in to help Cosby defend a dizzying array of legal problems across the country as several women came forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct or defamation. The firm was hired to work on civil cases involving three accusers, but its task was later extended to include cases involving 10 women, and 40 “same-act” witnesses lodging similar accusations, across the country, according to the arbitration papers.
The firm says its work load exceeded 11,000 hours of work by lawyers, along with costs including $300,000 in online searches and $48,000 for a lawyer’s work reading two gossip novels and a book about the Playboy Mansion, where one of the alleged Cosby assaults occurred.
The law firm did not immediately return a message left late Monday seeking comment. Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt said he has not been involved in the fee dispute, which echoes an earlier lawsuit, later settled, that a Philadelphia firm lodged against Cosby over unpaid legal bills.Cosby is serving a three- to 10-year prison term after he was convicted at a 2018 retrial near Philadelphia. H