Them’s fightin’ words! Nevertheless, “a liar and a shyster” is the phrase attorney Ralph Manginello used to describe fellow attorney Truett Akin IV, and he’s not the first to call Truett untruthful.
Is Akin really “a liar and a shyster”?
In a million-dollar lawsuit he filed against Akin and Michelle Mears in Harris County District Court in April, Manginello claims that the founding partners of AkinMears failed to compensate him properly for the investment he made in their firm.
Assuming that they didn’t, why didn’t they? Maybe for the same reason they tried to stiff former employee Amir Shenaq.
“Akin and Mears didn’t pay Shenaq for one reason and one reason only,” Shenaq concluded in the claim he filed in a lawsuit against the firm a few years back. “They didn’t pay him because they didn’t feel like it.”
That’s a simple explanation – one that may apply to most instances of nonpayment, but one that delinquent debtors rarely offer. Generally, they dissemble. They put off responding to inquiries about overdue payment as long as they can, try to change the subject when pressed about the delay, and eventually come up with some kind of excuse that shifts the blame to the debtee or to circumstances beyond the deadbeats’ control.
Shenaq worked for AkinMears as a business development officer and claimed he was fired so the firm could avoid paying him the millions of dollars he was owed for securing thousands of medical mesh lawsuits for them.
Now Manginello is suing them.
“Historically, the firm obtained clients by running television advertisements,” he asserts in his suit. “In order to advertise and handle a large volume of cases, the firm needs money. And lots of it.”
The firm got money, and lots of it, from Manginello, after promising him a tidy profit. “Everything seemed fine,” Manginello admits in his suit, until he “started asking about the money,” i.e., the promised return on his $100,000 investment.
Which isn’t surprising. No one likes to be called “a liar and a shyster,” especially if he is.