A Georgia judge has ordered Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan to pay $175,000 in attorney fees, saying the firm had a strategy of trying to “litigate [the] plaintiff to death.”
Judge Dax Lopez of DeKalb County ordered the payment of attorney fees as a sanction in an amended order last Tuesday, according to the Daily Report, which quotes from the order.
“In sum, defendants gambled on a bad-faith strategy and lost,” Lopez wrote. “Defendant vigorously litigated baseless defenses in hopes of litigating plaintiff, an individual with very limited resources, to the point where he could no longer afford to continue without settling for a lesser sum.”
Sutherland represented software companies in a suit filed by Timothy Coen, a former general counsel for a subsidiary, according to the story. Coen had claimed the companies fired him without abiding by his employment contract, which required payment of a $100,000 bonus and base salary for the rest of the contract term in the event of termination.
