Who Is William H.Lancaster?

A friend was updating me on the status of the various legal actions against Fr Kelley the other day, and as a result, I was curious enough to google the lead attorney representing the Anglican Church in America and the St Mary of the Angels dissidents, William H. Lancaster. Mr Lancaster, it turns out, is well matched with his clients. (In court, when asked exactly which client he represents, he's answered the ACA, although he appears to work closely with the unelected St Mary's vestry, whose interests are not necessarily the same as those of the ACA.)

By far the most notable event in Mr Lancaster's professional history appears to be a malpractice lawsuit brought against him and his then-firm, Seyfarth Shaw, and a subsequent lawsuit Mr Lancaster brought against Seyfarth Shaw alleging demotion as a result of the malpractice suit. The pertinent details appear here, among other places.

A demoted Seyfarth Shaw LLP partner has sued the firm for allegedly forcing him from an equity partnership position, claiming that executives used the attorney's purportedly poor handling of a case involving Tae Bo creator Billy Blanks as an excuse to de-equitize.

Seyfarth partner William H. Lancaster, who is still employed at the firm, filed suit against the firm and several members of its executive committee on Nov. 25 [2009] in the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles.

According to the complaint, greedy executives jumped on a now-reversed $31 million malpractice verdict stemming from Lancaster's casework with Blanks as an excuse to demote him.

After Lancaster's representation of Blanks led to the malpractice verdict against Seyfarth, firm executives publicly backed him, the suit states.

“Defendants publicly pronounced with confident [sic] that the verdict was wrong, that no error or malfeasance existed and that the verdict would be reversed on appeal," Lancaster said. [I'm a little concerned about the apparent error in that quote, of course.]

In private, however, executives cited his performance on that case as the reason behind their efforts to strip Lancaster of his equity partnership, the complaint alleges.

Executive compensation committee members allegedly promised to make life at Seyfarth “very difficult” for Lancaster if he didn't accept a demotion to a nonequity position, according to the suit.

The details of the malpractice suit are also revealing:

The decision in Blanks v. Seyfarth Shaw, No. B183426, stems from a case that Blanks brought against an accountant who acted as his agent -- even though he did not have an agent's license -- in violation of the Talent Agencies Act. Blanks was represented in that action by Seyfarth Shaw attorney William H. Lancaster, a partner in its Los Angeles office.

In March 2002, the California labor commissioner dismissed the case against the accountant, finding that Lancaster, acting on behalf of Blanks, had not met the deadline for filing it with Labor Commissioner. In addition, the California state court dismissed the case because it was not filed on time with the Labor commissioner.

Blanks then filed a legal malpractice lawsuit against Seyfarth Shaw and Lancaster, alleging that the attorney's failure to file the action on time before the labor commissioner caused Blanks to lose millions. In addition, Blanks asserted that Lancaster purposely delayed filing in order to generate fees.

After a six-week trial, a jury found the law firm liable on all causes of action and ordered it to pay Blanks $15 million in punitive damages, in addition to about $15 million in compensatory damages.

My wife, a retired attorney, suggests that a simple error like failure to file on time is highly unusual for a partner in a prestige law firm -- Lancaster presumably had a great deal of support from associates and paralegals at Seyfarth to handle such details, and it is extremely puzzling that he could have missed something so simple. The $30 million verdict against him was dismissed on a technicality, but it appears that Seyfarth Shaw had already made a determination on Lancaster's suitability.

The timeline here is intriguing.

Lancaster became an equity partner in April 2000 and was demoted to nonequity status six years later.

However, by August 2000, Lancaster missed the Aug. 2, 2000 deadline to file a petition despite the Court of Appeal’s prominent discussion of the commissioner’s exclusive original jurisdiction and the one-year statute of limitations in a case earlier that year. In other words, within four months of becoming a partner, Lancaster was, at least as suggested by the record, screwing up big time. The disappointed plaintiff, Blanks, then filed a malpractice suit in 2003 against Lancaster and his firm.

It doesn't seem to task the intelligence greatly to conclude that Seyfarth's initial opinion of Lancaster changed. In addition,

After the $30 million malpractice verdict was issued in the Blanks case, Seyfarth’s malpractice insurer required another partner to supervise Lancaster’s work in another major case.

So,

It was in this atmosphere, the suit says, that [managing partner Stephen] Poor “brusquely interrupted” Lancaster during a 2005 preliminary compensation review. Poor told Lancaster he was a liability for the firm and the executive committee believed it would be best if he looked for work elsewhere. “Plaintiff was shocked by Poor’s attitude and words,” the suit says. Lancaster had a productive practice, yet Poor asserted he would not be able to get work from clients, the suit says. He was asked to leave again in a 2006 compensation meeting.

On May 20, 2009, the California Supreme Court refused to review an appeals court decision that threw out the $30 million judgment against Lancaster and Seyfarth Shaw on a technicality. Not long afterward, Lancaster turned around and sued Seyfarth.

My own experience as a sometime writer of corporate policies and procedures was that it's pretty typical for a corporate policy to say that any employee who sues his employer is subject to immediate termination -- of course. Lancaster, however, continued to work for Seyfarth for some period after filing his suit, something that clearly raised the eyebrows of several commentators on blogs and journals. We must assume that at some time after filing his suit in 2009, Seyfarth settled the case and Lancaster left the firm -- apparently taking another partner there, Damon Anastasia, with him. The resume in the link says that Anastasia became Lancaster's partner in a new firm, Lancaster & Anastasia LLP, in 2010. There's no equivalent specificity in Mr. Lancaster's professional profiles on the web.

We know nothing of the circumstances under which Mr Anastasia left Seyfarth Shaw, except that the professional histories of both men suggest they'd worked together at previous law firms. Neither can be said to have been on any sort of fast track -- according to my wife, a lawyer should expect to be named partner at a law firm within seven years of being hired; both Lancaster and Anastasia appear to have jumped around at various firms before making partner later in their careers. But then Lancaster seems to have had an unhappy time at Seyfarth, finally leaving amid controversy, with Anastasia, possibly a Lancaster protégé, leaving at roughly the same time.

Details in the various commentaries on these cases suggest that a partner at Seyfarth could expect to earn a little over $500,000 per year. Lancaster, following his demotion, was down to about $260,000, with tuition payments for half a dozen kids and a lifestyle to support. We don't know what Anastasia was making. Clearly Lancaster had no choice but to leave Seyfarth, but it's hard not to think Anastasia was unlikely to clear anything like either amount leaving that firm for a new one born in controversy following a botched malpractice suit.

As my wife says, we're probably looking at just the tip of an iceberg here. All we can be pretty sure of is that Lancaster & Anastasia LLP has been working a series of rather farfetched, nickel-and-dime lawsuits against Fr Kelley for well over a year at this point. They must really need the money.