Vincler & Knoll v. Theodore R. Paul

NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
No. 02-1537
VINCLER & KNOLL
v.
THEODORE R. PAUL,
Appellant
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. Civil Action No. 99-cv-00597)
District Judge: Honorable Robert J. Cindrich
Submitted Under Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)
November 21, 2002
Before: BARRY and AMBRO, Circuit Judges
DOWD*, District Judge
(Opinion filed December 3, 2002)
OPINION
*Honorable David D. Dowd, Jr., United States District Judge for the Northern
District of Ohio, sitting by designation.

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AMBRO, Circuit Judge:
The law firm of Vincler & Knoll brought this case against its former client,
Theodore R. Paul, seeking attorneys’ fees pursuant to the doctrine of quantum meruit. The
jury awarded Vincler & Knoll $182,000, and the District Court ordered Paul to pay pre-
judgment interest on this amount.
Paul hired Vincler & Knoll under a contingency fee contract. He appeals from the
District Court’s judgment awarding quantum meruit fees on the ground that he did not
terminate the contingency fee contract with Vincler & Knoll, that the firm withdrew from
its representation before completing the contingency, and, accordingly, that the quantum
meruit doctrine is inapplicable. The trial record, however, contains sufficient evidence to
support the jury’s conclusion, found in a special interrogatory, that Vincler & Knoll did not
withdraw, and the jury could also have determined on the evidence before it that Paul
terminated the contractual relationship he had entered with the firm. Additionally, the
District Court did not abuse its discretion in awarding pre-judgment interest. Accordingly,
we affirm.
BACKGROUND
Paul and Vincler & Knoll entered into a contingency fee contract under which the
firm agreed to represent Paul in a lawsuit against Aubrey Gladstone, and Paul agreed to pay
the firm forty percent of any money “realized” after trial from Gladstone, or thirty-three
percent if the case settled. The case did go to trial, and in 1991 Vincler & Knoll obtained

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in the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas a judgment for Paul in the amount of
$699,000 and then successfully defended the case on appeal.
Vincler & Knoll did not, however, have as much success in collecting the judgment
from Gladstone. The firm initiated several different proceedings against Gladstone and
entities related to him, but did not manage to exact any of the money he owed to Paul.
Instead, another law firm hired by Paul – Katarincic & Salmon – collected $275,000 of the
judgment against Gladstone, and it is expected that Paul will receive an additional $337,000
from another enforcement action litigated by Katarincic & Salmon based on the judgment
won by Vincler & Knoll.
In the midst of all this, Vincler & Knoll, disagreeing with the litigation strategy Paul
wished to pursue, petitioned the Court of Common Pleas to bifurcate between it and Paul the
judgment the Court had previously entered in favor of Paul against Gladstone. The Court
refused, but entered an order directing that Vincler & Knoll could continue to attempt to
collect the judgment and that any money collected should be deposited in a fund set up by the
Court. The Court subsequently clarified in a second order that, when pursuing the judgment,
Vincler & Knoll was acting as trustee ad litem for the Court. To complicate matters further,
between the Court’s entry of the first and second orders, Paul petitioned it to remove Vincler
& Knoll as his counsel. Paul’s request was granted, though Vincler & Knoll did continue after
its termination to work to collect the judgment.
Vincler & Knoll filed this lawsuit against Paul in a Commonwealth court, and Paul
removed it on diversity grounds to the United States District Court for the Western District

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of Pennsylvania. A jury found in a special interrogatory that Vincler & Knoll had not
withdrawn from its representation of Paul in the original case against Gladstone, and awarded
the firm $182,000 in fees.
Paul moved for judgment as a matter of law. The Court denied the motion, entered
judgment on the verdict, and granted Vincler & Knoll’s motion for pre-judgment interest.
Paul timely appealed.
DISCUSSION
A. Judgment entered on the jury’s verdict
A court may grant judgment as a matter of law only if the record contains “no legally
sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury” to have found in favor of the non-moving
party. Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 50(a)(1). “The question is not whether there is literally no evidence
supporting the party against whom the motion is directed but whether there is evidence upon
which the jury could properly find a verdict for that party.” Walter v. Holiday Inns, Inc., 985
F.2d 1232, 1238 (3d Cir. 1993) (quoting Patzig v. O’Neil, 577 F.2d 841, 846 (3d Cir. 1978)).
We review de novo a denial of a motion for judgment as a matter of law. Id.
There is no dispute that Pennsylvania law applies to this case. Under that law,
[a] client may terminate his relation with an attorney at any time,
notwithstanding a contract for fees, but if he does so, thus making
performance of the contract impossible, the attorney is not
deprived of his right to recover on a quantum meruit [sic] a proper
amount for the services which he has rendered.
Hiscott & Robinson v. King, 626 A.2d 1235, 1237 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1993) (citations omitted).
Paul argues first that he did not terminate the contractual relationship with Vincler &

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1 Paul requested that the District Court charge the jury that it had to find that he
terminated Vincler & Knoll in order to award quantum meruit fees. The Court did not give
such an instruction, but Paul did not object on this basis when the Court told the parties
what instructions it would give. Nor does Paul complain here about the jury charge, but
instead only about the denial of his motion for judgment as a matter of law. Therefore, the
only issue we must consider is whether sufficient evidence supported the jury’s verdict.
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Knoll and therefore that Pennsylvania law will not support an award of quantum meruit fees.
Assuming Paul interprets correctly the limitations of Pennsylvania’s quantum meruit doctrine,
we nonetheless reject this argument because the jury could reasonably have found that Paul did
terminate the contingency fee contract with Vincler & Knoll when the Court of Common Pleas
granted Paul’s motion to remove the firm from the original case against Gladstone.1
Paul also attempts to use the fact that the Court ordered that Vincler & Knoll could still
pursue the judgment to show that the firm is not entitled to quantum meruit fees on the ground
that performance of the contract was not “impossible.” Id. As the District Court reasoned,
however, the Court of Common Pleas must certainly have entered this order intending that it
would protect Vincler & Knoll’s ability to collect a portion of the judgment as payment for the
services it had already provided in obtaining that judgment and defending it on appeal. We shall
not allow this order to operate as a bar to quantum meruit fees because to do so would effect
precisely the opposite result intended by the Court that entered it.
Paul further contends that Vincler & Knoll cannot obtain fees under the quantum
meruit doctrine because the firm withdrew from representing him. The District Court
instructed the jury, however, that “an attorney who voluntarily withdraws from the
representation of his client or who abandons the case is not entitled to a fee based on quantum

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meruit. Therefore if you find from the evidence that Vincler & Knoll voluntarily withdrew
from the representation of Mr. Paul or abandoned his case, then you should find in favor of the
Defendant.” App. at 1014. And in a special interrogatory, the jury found as follows:
Question 1: Did Plaintiff, Vincler & Knoll, voluntarily withdraw
from or abandon the prosecution of Defendant, Thomas R. Paul’s
lawsuit?
Answer: No.
App. at 1019. The jury could properly reach this conclusion given that Vincler & Knoll made
no attempt to withdraw from the original case against Gladstone, and even continued in its
attempts to collect the judgment after Paul had them removed from the case and hired new
counsel.
We therefore shall not disturb the decision of the jury.
B. Pre-judgment interest
Finally, Paul contends that the District Court abused its discretion in awarding pre-
judgment interest, arguing that Paul could not have known the amount he would owe to Vincler
& Knoll and that the District Court arbitrarily selected the date on which the interest began to
run. We do not agree.
The contingency fee contract provided for payment to Vincler & Knoll of forty percent
of the judgment collected if judgment was obtained as the result of a trial. “The mere fact that
parties dispute[d] the amount [did] not prevent it from being ascertainable by reference to a
standard fixed in the contract.” Trustees of the Univ. of Pennsylvania, 815 F.2d 890, 908 (3d
Cir. 1987). In addition, the District Court’s decision to begin the interest from the date Paul

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first collected on the judgment was not unreasonable.
Accordingly, the District Court did not abuse its discretion in awarding pre-judgment
interest to Vincler & Knoll.
CONCLUSION
The record contained sufficient evidence to permit the jury to award quantum meruit
fees to Vincler & Knoll, and thus the District Court was correct in denying Paul’s post-trial
motion for judgment as a matter of law. And the District Court acted within its discretion in
the award of pre-judgment interest. Consequently, we affirm the District Court’s ruling.

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TO THE CLERK:
Please file the foregoing Opinion.
By the Court,
Circuit Judge

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