Brown v. Grimes

Opinion

MOSK, J.

INTRODUCTION

For the following three reasons, the trial court refused to enforce a fee-sharing agreement between lawyers—plaintiff James L. Brown and *269defendant Milton C. Grimes—arising out of cases they handled in Texas: Brown had not performed his contractual responsibility to pay Paul Ross, a third party; Brown had unclean hands because he had unethically agreed to share his fees with Ross, a former lawyer who had resigned from the bar; and the fee-sharing agreement violated applicable Texas law because the clients did not consent to the arrangement at the outset of the…