Mass Tort Firm Abandons Suit Against California Fee-Sharing Ban

Wisner Baum, the mass torts firm that filed a legal challenge to California’s restrictions on legal fee-sharing with out-of-state firms owned by non-lawyers, dropped the suit three months into the case.

Managing partner Brent Wisner on Thursday told the US District Court in the Central District of California he was voluntarily dismissing the litigation, which he brought in late November against California’s Attorney General and State Bar to halt the enforcement of an “unconstitutional” law prohibiting the state’s lawyers from sharing contingency fees with firms outside the state that are owned by non-lawyers.

Wisner and the State Bar of California ...