Robert J Penfield

On 8/22/2012 myself and my husband hired Mr. Penfield to represent us on our appeal case. His consultation was a FREE consultation. We sat across from him in his conference room in Bellevue, WA as he entered and rentered the room as he also was handling some sort of arbitration issues with other clie...nts over the phone. This is the reason why we were there for two hours. He went over the pertinent documents to determine if he wanted to take our case. He stated he did and then he asked us for $10K up front. I said NO. Cannot do that. He sthen said $5K + referrals and had Michelle, his secretary make up the contract. I did refer one person to him within a week. He took my money and said he thought we had a great case. The brief was due in Pierce County COAII in approx. 35-40 days from the time we met with Mr. Penfield. I spent a lot of money getting all the necessary documents to COAII so the only thing left to do was file the brief. As the deadline for the brief due date neared, I became concerned, as Mr. Penfield never filed a Notice of Appearance. He took my case and my money but never filed a notice of appearance? This means Mr. Penfield never really intended on representing me, but made me believe otherwise and waited until the 11th hour to notify me so I was faced with a serious time crunch. After I left several messages and emails Mr. Penfield finally responded and stated that he did not think we had a good case and he is not going to represent us in the appeal. He then said we should just move to mediation. This was not possible because we did not have a valid Notice of Default. Mr. Penfield who is supposedly up on foreclosure statutes certainly would know that one needs a valid NOD to go to mediation under the department of commerce in our state. This to me is a conflict. Mr. Penfield's contract was a flat fee contract to write the appeal, which he never did. He then issued me a new contract for mediation. He said all of the money was spent and really his hourly fee is $375 per hour, which was not specified anywhere on his contract and if that was his fee to begin with we would have never hired him.