The Accident
Kimberly Couch's daughter, Kimberly Landrum, was riding in the backseat of a car in South Carolina when a commercial truck driver hit the vehicle. Another driver hit them from behind. Landrum, wearing a seatbelt, survived. Couch says the seatbelt saved her daughter's life. Landrum sustained severe injuries to her head, neck, and back and wore a neck brace for months while being treated by a chiropractor in Troy, Alabama.
That is the kind of case personal-injury attorneys exist to take. Commercial trucking accidents involve commercial insurance policies, federal motor-carrier regulations, and defendants with legal departments and risk-management teams. A competent PI attorney with a serious-injury case against a commercial carrier can, in the ordinary course, recover substantial compensation for a client with documented spinal injuries. That is not plaintiff's-lawyer marketing copy. It is how the economics of commercial-trucking litigation work.
Couch hired an attorney named Shunnarah first. She says he ignored her for months. She fired him and hired attorney Steven Mezrano of The Mezrano Law Firm in Birmingham, Alabama. That is where the case, from Couch's perspective, went from badly handled to something worse.
What Couch Says Happened
Couch's account is specific in the ways that matter. She says Mezrano deliberately avoided all contact with her. She says she never had a single direct conversation with him. She says he settled her daughter's case without conferring with her and without her consent. She says he refused her repeated requests for a copy of the settlement accounting, lied about the amount of the settlement, and pocketed all of the funds except a single check for $13,000.
The $13,000 check, according to Couch, was delivered by one of Mezrano's employees. Not mailed to her home. Not wire-transferred. She says she had to meet the employee on the side of a highway to receive it.
Couch says the Mezrano firm has repeatedly denied her and her daughter's requests for a copy of the settlement — the foundational document that would show what the case actually resolved for, what the attorney's fee percentage was, what costs were deducted, and what the client was owed. She says the firm never returned her contact requests. She is now applying for reimbursement through the Alabama client-security fund — the fund every state bar maintains to compensate clients whose attorneys stole from them — a fund that exists precisely because attorneys sometimes do exactly what Couch is describing.
The Duty That Exists for This Exact Situation
The attorney-client settlement rule is not subtle. Rule 1.5 of the Alabama Rules of Professional Conduct requires that fees be reasonable. Rule 1.15 requires that client funds be held in trust, accounted for, and promptly delivered. Rule 1.4 requires that the attorney keep the client reasonably informed and explain matters to the extent necessary to allow the client to make informed decisions. An attorney who settles a case without telling the client, refuses to provide an accounting, and delivers a fraction of the proceeds via a roadside handoff is not in a gray area. There is no gray area. The rules exist for this exact situation because this exact situation has happened enough times that the Bar wrote rules to stop it.
The Alabama State Bar's Client Security Fund — the fund Couch says she is applying to — exists for the same reason. It is a public acknowledgment that some attorneys, some of the time, steal from their clients, and that the profession has an obligation to make those clients whole even when the attorney who stole from them cannot or will not.
The Question the Bar Has Not Answered
Steven Mezrano is a real attorney. The Mezrano Law Firm is a real firm, located at 31 Inverness Center Parkway, Suite 350, Birmingham, Alabama 35242. The firm advertises. It has a phone number. It has a website. Whether it has responded to the Alabama State Bar about Kimberly Couch's case is not something Couch has been told. Whether the Bar has opened a file is not something Couch has been told. Whether the check she received — the $13,000 delivered on the side of a highway — represents 10 percent of the settlement or 90 percent of it or some number in between is not something Couch has been shown.
That last number is the one that matters. The settlement statement in a personal-injury case is not optional. The attorney is required to provide it. The client is required to sign off on it. The disbursements are itemized in writing. If the Mezrano firm has produced this document to Couch, none of her allegations hold up. If it has not, the Bar's next step is not complicated. Every settlement has a paper trail: the insurance company that issued the check, the bank that cleared it, the attorney-trust account it passed through. subpoena the paper trail. Compare the trail to the $13,000. The rest is arithmetic.
A Note on Sources
This article is based on Kimberly Couch's detailed submissions to The Ethics Reporter, including her account of the underlying trucking accident, her daughter's injuries, her retention of first Shunnarah and then Steven Mezrano, and her description of the settlement disbursement; the Alabama Rules of Professional Conduct; and the Alabama State Bar Client Security Fund's existence and purpose. Steven Mezrano and The Mezrano Law Firm did not respond to requests for comment. The Ethics Reporter has not independently reviewed the underlying settlement documents, which Couch says the firm has refused to provide.
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