A U.S. District judge in Chicago has dismissed a malpractice suit against the law firm of Dickinson Wright brought by a group of developers behind a proposed Oklahoma casino that ran afoul of that state’s government.
MCZ Development and Sheffield Development Partners, both of Illinois, together with Golden Canyon Partners of Nevada and Florence Development Partners of Oklahoma failed in their bid to hold the Detroit-based firm and one of its lawyers, Dennis J. Whittlesey, liable for legal advice they say misled them into believing there would be no legal obstacles to building the Kialagee Tribal Town’s Red Clay Casino planned for a northeastern Oklahoma location that was not on Kialagee land and had not been designated by the federal government as trust land on behalf of the tribe.
The developers claimed Whittlesey assured them that “even a legal challenge in court would not result in an injunction being entered during the course of litigation”.
But then, in February 2012, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office sued in federal court to stop the project and won an injunction in July of that year. The developers appealed. The following year, they also sued Whittlesey and Dickinson Wright for damages, claiming they lost money invested in the project before the injunction as well as expenses incurred in fighting the state’s suit.
In November 2014, they prevailed in the first part of their case, winning a decision against Oklahoma in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Court that lifted the injunction on the grounds that Oklahoma’s tribal-state compact requires that disputes be settled in arbitration, thus prohibiting civil suits.
On the basis of that victory, Dickinson Wright in May of this year asked U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman in Chicago to dismiss the developers’ suit, and earlier this month she did, citing a 1986 federal ruling in Illinois that stated, “No malpractice exists unless counsel’s negligence has resulted in the loss of an underlying cause of action, or the loss of a meritorious defense if the attorney was defending in the underlying suit.”
The plaintiffs also claimed they were given bad advice concerning the Kialagee’s jurisdiction over the land, but Coleman ruled that since the jurisdiction question has not been settled by law, Whittlesey and Dickinson Wright cannot be found to have committed malpractice in the matter.
She concluded the developers’ claims are at “best premature and their damages are speculative”.
Dickenson employs around 400 lawyers in offices in several states. The suit was brought in Chicago because Whittlesey, who is based in Washington, D.C., purportedly provided legal services to the developers in northern Illinois.
