By Bill Wichert

Law360 (March 16, 2021, 8:42 PM EDT) -- A New Jersey state judge on Tuesday refused to toss claims that an attorney pressured his then-client to accept an unfavorable medical malpractice settlement when her case was on the verge of a mistrial at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing the early stage of the present action.

A year after the $600,000 deal was put on the record in the underlying matter, Superior Court Judge Lisa M. Adubato denied attorney Anthony Pope's bid to escape Barbara Bok's legal malpractice suit over how he allegedly threatened to withdraw as her counsel if she opted for a new trial and told her that she would have to shoulder expert fees for a retrial.

At the current stage of the case, such allegations must be taken as true and Bok must receive every inference that Pope's alleged conduct was "coercive" and "put the plaintiff in a situation of being under duress," Judge Adubato said during a Zoom hearing, stressing that she is not "making the determination that a fact-finder would at trial."

In seeking to dismiss Bok's complaint, Pope pointed to statements that she made about the settlement before Superior Court Judge Mary K. Costello on March 16, 2020. While answering questions from Pope, Bok indicated that she entered into the deal voluntarily and that she was "satisfied" with his services, court documents state.

Pope's attorney Max Billek of Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP on Tuesday emphasized that remark and accused Bok of now trying to "extort" more money out of Pope. Given how the pandemic has affected the courts and personal injury plaintiffs in New Jersey, Billek told the judge that he is "very concerned that lawsuits like this are going to become commonplace."

But Judge Adubato noted that Pope asked Bok "cursory" questions about the settlement and did not ask whether she was satisfied with the deal. Nothing was put on the record about "the reason for the settlement," the judge added.

Even accounting for how Bok said she was satisfied with Pope's services, the judge said "the additional allegations surrounding the settlement aspect of this complaint lead me to deny the motion today."

The underlying case dealt with Bok's allegations that a doctor botched her bilateral tonsillectomy during a 2017 visit to Hackensack University Medical Center, causing her to suffer severe injuries, court documents state. The trial in the case ultimately kicked off with opening statements and testimony on March 9, 2020.

Three days later, state judiciary officials suspended all new jury trials due to the COVID-19 pandemic but said that ongoing jury trials could continue.

After Bok arrived at the courthouse on March 12, Pope informed her that the defendants had offered a total settlement of $600,000, according to her Dec. 2 legal malpractice complaint. Pope also told her that "a juror had called in sick, presumably suffering from COVID-19," the complaint said.

Bok assumed "her case would have to be canceled" since other jurors had been in contact with the sick juror, according to the complaint. Because the last settlement demand from Pope was $3 million, Bok initially refused to accept the $600,000 offer and wanted to either pursue the trial if it was postponed or a new trial.

Pope told her that she had to accept the settlement since he had spent more than $132,000 on her case and that if the case was postponed, "he was going to withdraw as her attorney and ... she would have to pay over $50,000 in expert fees, if the case had to be retried," the complaint said.

"The plaintiff being destitute, without financial resources to pay $50,000 for duplicate expert fees for a retrial and faced with the fact that her attorney was now threatening to abandon her if she opted to have a new trial, she believed under the pressure being imposed upon her, that she had no alternative but to acquiesce to the settlement proposal that was unfair on the court's record," according to the complaint.

Bok is represented by Joseph E. Collini of Emolo & Collini.

Pope is represented by Max Billek of Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP.

The case is Barbara Bok v. The Law Firm of Anthony Pope PC et al., case number L-8234-20, in the Superior Court of New Jersey, County of Essex.

--Editing by Steven Edelstone.

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