A San Francisco lawyer is accusing Baker & McKenzie of stealing his client after the megafirm agreed to handle a small task for him in Taiwan.
Douglas Akay, of the two-attorney Akay & Associates, says that he filed a suit for shareholders in a noodle restaurant chain in 2002. Due to the challenge of serving foreign parties, Chicago-based Baker & McKenzie was enlisted to serve several of the defendants in Taiwan, as well as a few in the British Virgin Islands and Bermuda, according to a complaint Akay filed Monday in San Francisco Superior Court.
The problem for Akay came, according to his allegations, when the bigger firm bad-mouthed him and seduced his clients away -- and earned more than $1 million in fees from the business. He's named Baker & McKenzie as well as two partners in the firm's San Francisco office, Christopher Van Gundy and Bruce Jackson, as defendants.