Barry S. Mittelberg

Needed a litigation attorney to handle a personal injury. He assigned a young female attorney to my case. She promptly dropped the ball during an arbitration. Ineffective representation. No pre-consultation before the arbitration. Zoom was used. Opposing council twisted my testimony while my attorney... sat there and never interjected. Lots of pertinent information never came to light. Arbitrator gave an award but it was cut down 80% because the arbitrator decided that I was at fault because of the opposition attorney had twisted my information to suit his clients case. Then, the defendants decided on a court case. Mr Mittleberg sent me a letter quitting because he couldn’t afford to represent me in trial.

Although my initial couple of contacts were with Mr. Mittelberg, to 'sell' me to use his firm, the attorney who handled my bankruptcy was a gentleman by the name of Steven Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein's role was to appear with me in my meeting with the Trustee's representative (his law partner). Mr. Wein...stein did not do the paperwork and did not do the intake interview to get a clear handle. In fact, after the bankruptcy filing was almost ready, he then sat down with me and undid what we had put together for filing. Then, during the negotiation with the Trustee's representative, he offered nothing to assist me in presenting my situation. What he did do was to negotiate an arrangement with the Trustee for me to pay my taxes to the Trustee who would then pay the IRS. Although I had the full amount due in my bank account, I was convinced that this arrangement was for my benefit and would actually help me in my out of pocket case due to the Trustee. Unfortunately, what he didn't tell me was that this arrangement would not pay the IRS all of the money I owed them, leaving a balance that I still had to pay. Had I known this, I would have paid the IRS the full amount in April, instead of paying the full amount to the Trustee. Keeping this short, I will add that these negotiations took place in April, 2014 and my bankruptcy was discharged on May 12th, 2014. As of the date of this review, November 3rd, 2014, no money has been paid to the IRS by the Trustee. In fact, due to this non-payment, a levy was placed on my bank account so that I could not pay current bills. Although I pleaded with Mr. Weinstein, as well as Mr. Mittelberg, for help, they did nothing to intercede on my behalf and, in fact, told me that I needed to be patient and everything that could be done had already been done. No attempt was made to contact the Trustee or the IRS on my behalf. I was told by Mr. Weinstein that their firm had worked on my behalf and accomplished what they set out to accomplish. Unfortunately, for me, that means they set out to accomplish nothing since nothing but paper pushing has been accomplished.