Peter Sotolongo Update

We've previously written about Peter here and here. Finally, some good news: he just beat Curtis Mase in his first admiralty trial.

Anyone know the details?

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Bye Bye Jay Wingate. Hello Peter Sotolongo?

Sorry for the lack of posts, folks, I had some lawyering to do. Ok, actually I went skiing in Colorado for a couple days. By the way, the powder was very nice.


Anyway, news here that Jay Wingate has agreed to drop out of the law business in the wake of allegations involving inside Royal Caribbean settlement info:

Embattled lawyer Jay Wingate agreed Thursday to drop out of 77 shipboard injury cases after Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines claimed his firm paid a cruise employee for inside information. Wingate said he is closing his practice, but the future of the cases is uncertain.

The Miami-based cruise company filed a motion two weeks ago to disqualify Wingate's law firm from pursuing the lawsuits against it. An attached affidavit from a fired Royal Caribbean employee said she accepted cash from two Wingate investigators in exchange for information about lawsuit settlement authorization, including the amount of money the cruise operator was willing to pay to settle cases.

At a hearing Thursday before Senior Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Herb Stettin, Wingate's attorney Miles A. McGrane III of McGrane Nosich & Ganz in Coral Gables announced Wingate would withdraw as counsel from the pending cases.

Royal Caribbean attorney Curtis Mase, a partner with Mase & Lara in Miami, requested a brief recess and returned to relay his client's elation."They are quite surprised and amenable," he said.

The fired employee's name was blacked out in the court filing, but the Daily Business Review obtained an unredacted copy identifying her as Wanda Ballestas, a former supervisor for crew claims in the company's risk management department. Ballestas acknowledged accepting a series of $500 payments for Royal Caribbean's confidential settlement projections and a $2,000 Christmas bonus, according to the affidavit. She admitted passing information on 20 plaintiffs to Wingate investigators Maria Elena Parilla and Nelson Ayala.

Wingate and McGrane vigorously denied Ballestas' claims at the hearing and said dropping out of the cases was not an admission of wrongdoing.

But the convoluted legal saga did not end with Wingate's withdrawal from the cases.

Peter Sotolongo, a partner in The Wingate Firm, said in an interview that he is starting his own firm and hopes to take over many of the cases against Royal Caribbean. Although he was named in Royal Caribbean's motion to disqualify, Sotolongo came into the hearing expecting he would be in line to take over the bulk of the cases the firm was dropping. But the potential hiring of another firm to help those clients was a setback to that effort.

Royal Caribbean would oppose Sotolongo taking on the remaining cases, Mase said. "If Peter Sotolongo comes to represent any of these plaintiffs, then at that time Royal Caribbean will take the action that they deem to be appropriate," he said. "I think it's probably fair to say that Royal Caribbean would oppose someone who was an attorney in the firm, a very small firm I might add, which is alleged to have engaged in improper conduct."

Hmm. Does anyone think this is over yet?

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When It Rains, It Pours

Jay Wingate manages to stay active.

If you're not busy defeating allegations that you ripped off Bill Huggett's widow, you're facing a motion like this:

Two investigators with a Miami law firm paid a Royal Caribbean Cruises employee to obtain inside information on the amount of money the company would be willing to pay to settle workplace injury claims, the employee alleges in a sworn court affidavit.

The affidavit by the Royal Caribbean supervisor is attached to motions asking Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Stuart Simons to disqualify the Wingate Law Firm of Miami from 75 pending lawsuits brought on behalf of cruise line crew members and passengers by the firm. A hearing on the Miami-based cruise line’s disqualification requests is set for Thursday.

The fired employee, whose name has been redacted from the affidavit, acknowledged accepting $500 payments in exchange for Royal Caribbean’s confidential settlement projections and received a $2,000 Christmas bonus, according to her statement.

The employee, a former supervisor for crew claims in the company’s risk management department, said she passed information on about 20 plaintiffs to Wingate investigators Maria Elena Parilla and Nelson Ayala.

The law firm vigorously denies the employee’s claims.

“This is just an effort to put us out of business. There was no truth about anything said in there,” said Jay Wingate, head of the law firm. “The whole thing is stupid” and “utter gibberish.”

Any contacts between the firm and Royal Caribbean or its employees were part of normal settlement discussions, Wingate said.

The affidavit offered no total dollar value of payments accepted by the supervisor, but payments of $500 each in 20 cases plus the Christmas bonus she received would total $12,000.

Royal Caribbean did not return several telephone calls seeking comment.

“What you’re talking about is what amounts to a form of commercial bribery,” said Curtis J. Mase of Mase Gassenheimer & Lara in Miami. He represents RCL.

“The overarching purpose of the motion is to seek to disqualify an attorney who engaged in very improper conduct,” Mase said.

The dozens of identical motions filed Tuesday seek to disqualify Wingate and firm attorney Peter Sotolongo from the cases.

Hmm. This story also appeared in Joan's column in today's Miami Herald. She usually doesn't run a story if the DBR is also covering it.

Did Curtis or his client shop this or put out a press release?

We all know the dirty business of some firms hiring investigators to generate clients. But something about this doesn't sit right.

I look forward to Jay's response brief. Email me if someone has more to share on this story.

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