Secrets, lies and betrayal are the heart of any good story.
Add an itinerant Frenchman with dark secrets and a powerful American law firm -- first fighting together to expose millions of dollars in fraud, now locked in bitter battle of money and ethics themselves -- and you've got an epic.
The long-running saga began with allegations of French banks secretively, and illegally, buying a California insurer. It has devolved into a battle over millions of dollars because of shifting -- and questionable -- fee-splitting deals between Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner and the informant it once represented.
Last February, Francois Marland, the French lawyer and holder of secrets, demanded arbitration over the fee-sharing deal. Thelen, represented by top-flight litigators at Keker & Van Nest, has responded with a lawsuit to cut him off. The showdown trial is scheduled for this summer in the Northern District of California.
At issue is $54 million that the law firm (then Thelen Reid & Priest) was paid for its work in a case that wrought a $715 million payout from a consortium of French bankers in 2005. The fee-sharing agreement in the dispute has raised the hackles of legal ethicists, who say some provisions skate dangerously close to buying Marland's testimony.