Summary: Dissolving firm Butler & Hosch has a new worry: former employees are suing them.
Butler & Hosch have enough to worry about. After all, they were recently the nation’s premier foreclosure firm, dominating 90 percent of the United States’ foreclosure litigation. Perhaps they got overeager, what with their flash of acquisitions, because with their latest merger with Morris Schneider & Wittstadt they choked. Not only that, they’ve got more troubles: their 700 some lawyers they’ve had working for them, nestled as they were throughout the U.S., feel they were due at least the 60-day warning employers are expected to give before firing their employees. That’s why former employees Stephen Regal and Gianna Hillis have hired attorney Seth Lehrman to take on Butler in a class action lawsuit.
Butler & Hosch CEO Bob Hosch announced in a letter to his staff he was stepping down and that Michael Moecken would aid in liquidating the company. Evidently this news was too abrupt for the lawyers in question, because if anybody would sue for being fired, you could expect it to cross the mind of 700 lawyers freshly out of work.
“Though Mr. Moecker has complete access to our assets, he will not have sufficient cash on hand to fund payroll at the end of this week,” Hosch had written. “Without BH employees and attorneys, there is no ongoing operation. BH cannot continue to function.”
Nevertheless, the suit claims the firm “knew that terminations were anticipated but failed to provide employees, nor state and local authority, with advance notices as required” by law. They aim to establish this in a trial by jury.
The former employees are being represented by Farmer Jaffe Weissing Edwards Fistos & Lehrman lawyers Gary Farmer, Steven Jaffe, Mark Fistos, and Lehrman. Butler & Hosch will be represented by Roy Kobert.
News Source: Daily Business Review
Wow, you really think a firm with 700 employees, not even all lawyers, handled 90% of the foreclosures in the USA??? I’ve got a bridge to sell you, but you’d better spend your funds learning about journalism, reading, etc. The crooked, lying firm merely touts having an office or lawyer in each of the states, that when aggregated would contain 90% of the US foreclosures. Repeating anything they say as being true would be wantonly naive. Exaggerating their already demonstrably false sense of importance, that’s downright Fox Newsian in its depravity. #shame
Read the Complaint. Butler & Hosch is being sued for intentionally depleting the firm of assets, charging employees for benefits they stopped actually acquiring for them, not paying them for the last three weeks of work, AND violating federal law by ignoring the WARN Act. This is a low point in pseudo web journalism. One must read hundreds of incompetent, p.r.-parroting fluff pieces to find another one so tortured and attenuated from even a grain of truth.
But other than that you think the report was Ok?
No. There’s plenty more to say.