Akin Gump Denies Malpractice in Case Accusing Attorney of Theft

Big Law firm Akin Gump is denying it committed legal malpractice while representing a company that acquires and sells internet domain names but admits that a now-fired Akin attorney may have violated ethics rules as its counsel.

“Akin will continue its efforts to fulfill its obligations to its former client FMA and stands ready and willing to compensate FMA for any valid claims for remaining damages actually caused by its misconduct,” the firm said in its Feb. 18 answer to Future Media Architect’s December complaint.

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld also said it “continues to seek a mechanism through which the parties can discuss the outstanding amounts FMA believes are owed.”

FMA sued the Washington-based firm in a New York State trial court in Manhattan, alleging attorney Heidi Liss stole from it. Akin, through Liss, had taken over FMA’s finances and bookkeeping operations, directing and negotiating the sale of domain names, oftentimes with little input from its Chief Executive Officer, Thunayan Al-Ghanim, the complaint says.

What made those acts even more “egregious,” according to the complaint, was the fact that Al-Ghanim was “impaired by drug abuse and known mental health issues,” it says. FMA is asking for at least $20 million in damages. Liss is not a named defendant in the suit. She is no longer with the firm and declined to take a call to her residence seeking comment on the allegations.

Akin began representing FMA in 2012 and then Al-Ghanim individually one year later even though their interests then were at odds with one another, the complaint says, in one instance representing both sides in a “so-called loan of $3 million from FMA for the CEO’s purchase of a Cayman Islands condominium in the name of a shell company.”

Akin denies wrongdoing, and details steps it took to “remediate the harm” allegedly done by Liss, hiring a forensic accounting firm to trace FMA’s funds and “making efforts to ensure that all improperly transferred assets were returned as directed by FMA,” the answer says.

The firm fired Liss and credited FMA with more than $500,000 “in legal fees previously incurred,” according to the court-filed answer. Akin contends that some of what she did was done outside the scope of her employment.

It says it informed FMA in 2016 that Liss may have violated several New York Rules of Professional Conduct and encouraged the company to consent to Akin’s reporting Liss’s conduct to the Departmental Disciplinary Committee, which FMA allegedly declined to do.

Akin says the complaint fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted and is asking for a jury trial on “all triable issues.”

The case is Future Media Architects, Inc. v. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, N.Y. Super. Ct., No. 657580/2019, answer filed 2/18/20.