Damon A. Chase

I was a client of Mr. Chase for two years, as one of dozens of plaintiffs in a large and complicated real estate and business lawsuit. (This was not the same case in which a previous reviewer on this site was involved.) It was the worst experience I ever had with an attorney, and was completly unsucc...essfull. A Federal Judge dismissed our case becasue, as she wrote in her dismissal order, Mr. Chase had missed a deadline to file an amended complaint and he had not confromed his pleading to how she had very specifically instructed him as to what she would or would not accept. When Mr. Chase informed his clients that our case had been dismssed he admitted himself that we did not loose because of the merits of the case we were trying to bring. We lost because of how it had been presented. At the beginning we all understood there are no guarantees when one signs on with an attorney as to how a case will turn out, but the experience of working with Mr. Chase was unpleasant and frustrating. He had promised to consult with us about strategy and information, but he did not do so. In conversations with him over time it became apparent that he did not remeber or note what we had told him previously, and he frequently contradicted things he had said before we had signed an agreement for him to represent us. He said, for example, that a specific bank that we felt had wronged us would be a defendent in the suit, but they were never mentioned. When we compared our invoices to those of other plaintiffs in the suit with us, it was apparent that clients had sometimes been billed for the same work more than once. When I attempted to get Mr. Chase to explain what was going on with the case or why he was conducting it in specific ways, or asked for detail and explanation about billings, Mr. Chase would immediately become aggresive and unpleasant. Other clients complained of the same treatment. Mr. Chase filed motions to withdraw as the attorney for many plaintiffs, and they were consequently left without representation in the middle of the case. Other clients voluntarily gave up on our case becasue, as some told me directly, they had no faith in how it was being conducted. Even now that the case has been dismissed, Mr. Chase is still refusing to return our original documents to us, as he is supposed to be required to do so. He is demanding payment for this. I am filing a complaint with The Florida Bar, and other fellow plaintiffs have told me they will do the same. I have employed half a dozen other lawyers in my life and have never before had an experience remotely like this, which is all the more ironic because it was Mr. Chase who very effectively convinced me at the beginning that I had been defrauded in the first place.

I felt strongly enough about the actions, or should I say inactions, of this attorney to file a formal complaint with the Florida Bar Association. Regrettably, I lost the case. The bottom line is I felt that this attorney did not do what he said he would do for me or the other 90+ clients I brought... to him to help us with a developer and the banks that most of us had loans with. The Bar Association obviously felt differently.