Levin Fishbein Sedran and Berman

Michael Fishbein took my medical malpractice case appeal. We had proof of malpractice, negligence, and the Pa. Superior Court called the defendant's testimony perjurious. ("We have little difficulty in concluding that Dr. Jannetta's testimony at deposition was different than, or inconsistent with, the testimony at trial." Levy v Jannetta, CCP Allegheny County, GD 81-7689; appeal -J. A370017/92 Levy v Jannetta et al, No. 00150 Pittsburgh, 1992. settled, 1995.). His associate at the time, Robert Unterberger, called me 5 times in a 2 1/2 hour period the night of the day the jury was to be picked. Each time he came down on the amount of a settlement that was being offered. Finally, crying, at the last call I told him to just get this over with. The amount was a pittance, not near covering my lifetime medical expenses. This occurred on a Friday night.

The following Monday I called Mr, Fishbein and wrote him a letter staiting I did not accept the settlement. He told me I had to (I later found out that is not true. If a lawyer is told in a timely fashion a settlement is not acceoptable they have to abide by the client's wishes)

Neither he nor his associate had taken any depositions, interrogatories or looked at admissions and other work from the initial case that verified the malpractice and negligence. I had to be pro se (self representing, I am not a lawyer) for the initial case. He relied on my work and only wrote a brief. For that he received 60,000$, 33% of the forced settlement.The perjury alone made this case worth much more then the small amt I received. I am prohibited from saying the amount but it was less then 211,000 and more then 209,000.

The case was in the courts for 14 years. Within a month of the forced settlement the doctor was nominated by Gov. Ridge to be Pa. Sec't of Health. (Peter J. Jannetta, 1995-****.) I leave it to you to decide if this appointment timing was related to forcing me to settle against my will.

When I told Mike 2 months before the trial date he was not acing as my advocate because no work had been done he replied "after 20 years of doing this you lose your zest for it." (He has denied saying this).

I found out, approximately 2 1/2 years later, that while he had no zest for my case he was the lead attorney against diet drug Phen-phen where he won a 50 million + verdict.

He did the least amount of work for the best payoff. In my experience he was lazy and unwilling to do the work necessary. He ignored the lawyer code of ethics and did not act as my zealous representative.