Ethics?

What is the name of your state? NC

I guess these questions would pertain to ethics so here goes..

Scenario- Say you and another party are having some legal work done that is a civil matter. You and party "B" have to have separate attorneys but are all in agreement on what needs to be done and so you offer to help pay party B's legal fees. The attorney agrees to take the case for B and says they can not start the work until they are paid in full and they understand you are paying them and says they will keep you informed of everything going on. You tell them that's great and you need to get together with the other party and will get back with them. However, unknown to either party, the attorney decides to go ahead and start the paper work without letting anyone know, even though they told you different.

For unknown reasons, B takes their time about getting together to get things done so the attorney gets mad, bills party B, even though the attorney said they wouldn't start the work until they were paid in full, they send B a disengangement letter, which they don't tell you about and neither does the attorney, even though that attorney said they would let you know everyting going on.

You finally call the attorney about 10 times trying to find out what's going on and they never return your calls so you set an appt to try to pay them when you and B finally get together to have this done and the attorney calls you to cancel the appt. The attorney states that they can't meet with you because they are person B's attorney, even though you are not looking for legal advice and tell you to talk to your attorney. They state they billed person B for work they took upon themself to do, even though they had not been paid or asked to start this yet.

My questions are-
1. Are they still person B's attorney, as he claims, even though they sent a letter of disengangement?

2. Was it right to start the work even though they stated he said he wouldn't begin until they were paid in full before hand and was told to wait until all parties got together? Not only that but they never finished the work. He just dropped it and is charging for work not completed.

I'm just sayin'. I may be comparing apples to oranges and if the situation is different just let me know. It's just that to me, it's like going in and asking for a transmission or something to be built, the person says ok, that's going to be X amount of dollars but I can't begin the work til I'm paid. You say ok, let me get together with my spouse, or whatever, to see what we can work out. The mechanic takes it upon himself to start the work anyway then says they are not going to put it in your car when you come back to get it done but still charges you for the parts and labor.

3. Shouldn't the attorney have at least returned the calls or let person "A" know what was going on or asked them what they were doing before starting the work? I mean he did say to begin with he would let them know everything going on, yet didn't do that and acted like it was a problem when asked. I'm not talking about the aspect of legal advice. Plus party A was the one paying for the services. If he had called all this could have been avoided.

For all the person knows, this attorney could just be saying they did this work because they got tired of waiting.

I don't understand why they said one thing and did another anyway.

4. Forgot to ask- Are you even someone's attorney if you haven't been retained?

I think that is all. Thanks in advance for any help.

It sounds like a violation of the rules of professional conduct in there somewhere to me. You are going to have to comb thru these rules but they are rules that each and every professional licensed atty of the U.S. bar *must* do business by. Pay paticular attn to rule 1.4 Communications and rule 1.8 Duties to Prospective Client

http://www.abanet.org/cpr/mrpc/mrpc_toc.html

Grace... did either party sign papers to retain the lawyer even though it was put on hold or do you know? Is this the situation we've spoken of personally in the past? If it is then I'll e-mail you with my perspective and ideas.

Thank you so much for the responses and help.

It was person B's attorney and the attorney says they contacted them even though they are saying otherwise, aside from the bill but person A, who is a party to the civil matter and was helping pay for it, never contacted them to keep them up to date on the matter as they said. So I'm not sure if that makes a difference or not.

I'll look over that link you gave me. Thank you!

Yes, this is the matter we talked about in the past. I know party A didn't sign anything, not sure about party B.

K.. Um.. I'll get an e-mail out to you tonight or tomorrow for sure...

I would check with party B although I realize why you wouldn't want to or why you might not be able to trust the answer and find out if they signed anything.