Benjamin B. Whiting

I hired Benjamin Whiting to represent me for an evidentiary hearing which didn’t ever occur. Benjamin DID NOT do any work on my case whatsoever beyond notifying the court he would be appearing as my attorney for the evidentiary hearing which did not happen. My court dates were switched several times ...by the court- yet this did not encourage Benjamin to contact me via phone/email in regard to my case. I attempted to discuss a witness list with Benjamin- he refused. I attempted to ask Benjamin when and how we would be subpoenaing said witnesses- I received no response. I gave Benjamin a $3,000 retainer where he did nothing for months, & in June after going almost an entire month while attempting to reach Mr. Whiting I chose to terminate him. Mr. Whiting returned $1600 of my money. Rather than solely charging me for the appearance he’d put into the court, Mr. Whiting made up various jobs surrounding my case which he did not do reflected on the invoice. I asked him to describe those jobs, or provide proof- he has since refused to respond to me. I can promise he didn’t do them because he wouldn’t (and couldn’t) quote the issues within my case (he couldn’t when I chose to terminate him) and this is because in the months while I waited for my new date- Mr. Whiting and I did not communicate about my own case for a total of 6o minutes. TWICE I believed I had court on a following Monday and neither time Mr. Whiting was prepared for the hearing I had paid him for. It was only luck of the draw those dates were re-arranged, but it doesn’t negate this attorneys decision to remain unprepared. We didn’t discuss ANY of the evidence I felt I had compiled for the case- because we didn’t discuss anything beyond the bare bones initially. Mr. Whiting took my retainer with the bare bones info he had, entered himself as my attorney, & charged me more than $1400 of a $3000 retainer which at this point would have seemingly been spent even though we NEVER MADE IT to the hearing. I will be communicating with the Michigan bar for over-billing and what next steps I can take in this process. I wanted to write a review to prevent people from spending their money with this man. Should you choose Mr. Whiting as representation, please consider my review in case you also end up needing to file against Mr. Whiting for over-billing. I only hired this man because I wanted new eyes on my case- I do not want others to make the same mistake if they’re able to prevent it.