Chadbourne & Parke partners fight $2 million damages award

In a case which one of the appellate panel members described as "vital to the profession", Charles Gibb and Robert Sheehan were seeking to show they did not act improperly when they moved their trusts and estates practice from Breed Abbott & Morgan to Chadbourne & Parke in 1991.

An earlier court case found that Gibbs had erred when he persuaded Sheehan to join Chadbourne and that both had improperly taken correspondence files with them and helped Chadbourne poach other Breed Abbott staff by revealing salary information.

The partners' lawyer, Greenberg Traurig partner, Leslie Corwin told the panel that the pair had followed the relevant ethical guidelines when they jumped ship to their new firm and in any case, Whitman Breed Abbott & Morgan, as the firm is now called, had failed to show it suffered loss. The court delayed making a decision until a later date.