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Suit alleges lawyer left cases behind

December 31, 2007

Daniel Tepfer

BRIDGEPORT - A former Fairfield lawyer, who left his legal practice last year to take over a Vermont ski resort, is accused in lawsuits of "snowing" former clients.

Two lawsuits filed Monday in Superior Court claim James Sullivan either failed to properly keep up with lawsuits he had filed for one local family or didn't even file a lawsuit as he had been hired to do by a local doctor.

"He strung these people along for a number of years telling them their cases were going along and then he left the state," said the plaintiffs' lawyer, Douglas Mahoney of Tremont and Sheldon.

Sullivan, who left the area last year in order to run Magic Mountain in Londonderry, Vt., did not return calls for comment.

His former law partners, Kevin Maher and Scott Williams, who are also named as defendants in the lawsuits, also did not return calls for comment.

In April 1999, five members of the Sieling family of Newtown were injured in a motor vehicle accident when their car was hit head-on by another driver, according to their lawsuit. The family hired Sullivan to represent them in a lawsuit over their injuries against the other driver.

Sullivan filed a lawsuit on behalf of the family in 2001 in Bridgeport Superior Court. But when he took no other action, the case was dismissed by a judge.

But Sullivan never told the Sieling family the case had been dismissed, according to the malpractice claim, but until late in 2006 was telling the family that their case was pending and that everything was fine.

Mahoney said Sullivan would meet to prepare the family for court procedures that would never go forward. He said the Sieling family did not learn about the dismissal until they became concerned by how long the case was taking and spoke to another lawyer.

In a second lawsuit, Dr. Roy Kalman, of Woodbridge, alleges he hired Sullivan in 1999 to collect disability insurance benefits that he was owed. From 1999 through the end of 2006, Sullivan told Kalman he was aggressively pursuing his case and had filed lawsuits against the insurance companies to collect those benefits, the lawsuit states.

It was not until after Sullivan began operating his ski resort that Kalman learned that his lawyer had never even filed the lawsuits against the insurance companies, Mahoney said. "Attorney Sullivan lied to these people about the status of their claims and never had the courage to tell them of his errors," Mahoney said. "Instead he left Connecticut to open a ski resort. One can only wonder how many other former clients of attorney Sullivan's have been treated in a similar fashion." Sullivan, who has been practicing law since 1993, is president of Magic Mountain and managing partner of a management team that bought the bankrupt resort. He lives in Manchester, Vt.

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