David S. Ratner

Mr. Ratner had a Zoom conference with me, after I litigated the case myself for 2.5 years in federal court and 3.5 years if you include at the local level. He made a show of being enthusiastic, and said something about hating the people I was litigating against. I expressed gratitude that he was wi...lling to take the case, but I was very clear that I wanted to be on the same page as far as what our goal was, as I had sacrificed 5 years of my life, and the cause was important to me. He agreed. He, and his partner, then refused to speak to me, for 5 months (until trial was 3 months away). I thought I had attorneys. After the next hearing, he emailed me demanding that I send him all the documents I had urgently (after ignoring me for 5 months). He started routinely accusing me of "not sending him anything", "refusing" to send him the documents I had, telling him that I "don't have anything". This occurred after I worked with his paralegals literally for over a month giving them all the documents I had, getting zero feedback or direction on what they wanted (it had been 5 years and I had approximately 50 gigabytes and hundreds of if not over a thousand files) , and creating new summaries and descriptions of experiences, looking up addresses, etc. Then he emailed me an offer from the opposing party for 0.017% of what we had agreed to aim for. He stated in writing 4 times that he was refusing to advocate for me. He emailed me emails from opposing counsel making false accusations against me as though they were true. He said he would not file any motions with the Court. During this time, he threatened to ask the Court for leave to withdraw 3 times while making false accusations against me. All our communications were in email. He also stated in writing that he planned to preclude me from discussing ANY damages except for "garden variety" pain and suffering for thirty days (despite suffering from permanent disability from one injury and 4 years of chronic health problems because of another), and that, under HIS plan, I would not be entitled to anything more than 0.083% of what we had already explicitly agreed to aim for. This was after literally 5 years of having to deal with legal misconduct from the opposing party and being unlawfully denied my rights, and catching them lying about the facts over and over. I finally got a hold of his partner on the phone and she heard me out fairly and said she would see what she could do. Literally during that phone call, Mr. Ratner emailed me making it clear that I no longer wanted to work with him, and his partner had made it clear that they were a team, and I can respect her position. I was forced to terminate the contract so that I could advocate for my case myself, and suffered 5 months of lost time before a trial and false expectations, and spent months working with his vague demands under false accusations and threats, for no productive end. He stalled on requesting to withdraw; it took him 4 weeks, and when he did, he made, publicly, an oblique accusation against me undermining my credibility without factual or rational basis. The policies of the Court clearly allow what I wanted him to do to address the problems he said there were, and I showed him the policies.