Damn Lawyers
NEW VIDEO! We are calling out some DAMN LAWYERS because we think what happened in a Texas inheritance battle is just wrong. Shouldn’t lawyers get punished when their advice costs you millions of dollars? Or maybe that was the plan all along. This is just the beginning of a multi-part investigation so stay tuned.
Damn Lawyers
“In case you aren’t keeping up, I’ve been sued a lot over the years. But luckily I have lawyers that I trust. But what if you discover your own lawyers may have screwed you?” Wayne Dolcefino told the camera.
“You think that somebody was working for you because they’re your attorney,” Richard Allison said.
“I want for it to be common knowledge that attorneys prey on families and they love inheritances because dead people can’t defend themselves,” Caroline Allison said.
The Allisons came to Dolcefino Media to investigate what they say their own lawyers did to them.
We are not afraid of lawyers.
“Mr. Borunda can we talk to you?” Andra Palacio said.
“No,” Jorge Borunda said.
“We want to ask you why should the Allisons pay for your bad advice?” Palacio said.
It’s not funny. That advice they say cost this brother and sister millions of dollars. Dr. Richard Allison died 9 years ago. Once the lawyers got involved, another family nightmare followed.
“My dad was a very mild-mannered, intellectual dad, very generous. He was a single dad raising my brother and me, and he was a good person in the world,” Caroline Allison said.
But the doctor had another passion.
“He was a doctor by day and an investor by night I would say. He read a lot of books, he was a big fan of Warren Buffett,” Caroline Allison said.
He remarried after his kids were grown, spending the last years of his life here in the upscale River Oaks neighborhood of Fairview, Texas. And he was rich.
The step-mom and the kids, well, they had some issues. But that’s a pretty common problem.
Daughter Caroline is a single mom with a small child living in the Houston area.
Brother Rich is a disabled veteran, an ex-marine, living in California.
Living in other towns, neither really knew just how much money their dad even had, what his will said. They didn’t even know he was dealing with advancing dementia.
And when he died, stepmom became administrator of this estate.
“She was very secretive with my dad’s medical condition, and then she was very secretive with my dad’s estate, and that was a source of frustration,” Caroline Allison said.
Navigating a multi-million dollar probate case, all the legalese. It’s hard.
“So Caroline did what a lot of you would do, she sought out the advice of a lawyer,” Dolcefino told the camera.
She found Houston attorney Nick Abaza, who claims expertise in busting trusts.
“Mr. Abaza, I wanted to talk to you about the Allison estate,” Palacio said.
“The original approach was going with a more softer approach. And then two weeks later, my brother signs, and now I get confirmation that my brother’s on board and they recommend war,” Caroline Allison said.
“They were saying that we were going to get nothing unless we challenged the agreement,” Richard Allison said.
The family legal war began in 2019, and boy do the Allisons regret they ever fired the first shot.
“We were family. And these attorneys came into our lives, and they just started a war that never had to happen,” Caroline Allison said.
Nick Abaza brought in his lawyer buddies who were at one time working in the same law firm.
Jorge Borunda, on his website, he brags about being a specialist in high stakes inheritances disputes.
Michael Trevino’s website is willcontestguy.com, and they were all on board to get a piece of the estate.
Ric was already paying what they call a contingency fee. The lawyer’s all but guaranteed a big payday in a probate case.
At first Caroline was paying Borunda 475 dollars an hour. She says she spent 70 thousand dollars just through discovery. Here are some of those big invoices.
“All right, well, we’re going to take up matters pertaining to the estate of Richard Gerrard Allison,” Judge Welson Copeland said.
Collin County Probate Judge Weldon Copeland ordered the parties to mediation twice.
Between mediations, Borunda convinced Caroline to stop paying hourly and instead move to the potential bigger payday for him, that’s a 35 percent cut of the kid’s ultimate inheritance.
“This is what Jorge tells me. Trial is imminent. This is going to trial. Your stepmother has a war chest and you don’t. You will go bankrupt,” Caroline Allison said.
A warning about contingency fees. The Allisons say their lawyers failed to tell them their legal right to have another lawyer look at their fee agreement before they signed it.
A second opinion.
Their malpracticed lawyers say the Allisons were induced by fraud, violations of the Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
The lawyers say they told the Allisons. They just have no written evidence proving it. Not very lawyerly.
“Did you guys ask Caroline to go contingent because you saw how many millions were in the estate?” Palacio said.
“No comment. She made her own decisions,” Abaza said.
The Allisons say the lawyers were pushing them to take a deal. This way they would get their money right away.
“I said I wanted time to look at this agreement the next day. And then they’re going, hey, you’re going to lose everything if you don’t sign it,” Richard Allison said.
“It was already midnight. We kept complaining that we were tired. They weren’t even going to let us eat,” Caroline Allison said.
In the deal, Caroline and Ric would get an investment account, a trust, valued at 9.5 million dollars.
For the lawyers that meant a possible 3.3 million payday.
“I had three attorneys ganging up on me and my brother. We were outnumbered,” Caroline Allison said.
At 2 a.m. on April 13, 2021, Caroline and Ric did sign the agreement.
And boy did they regret it within hours.
“We were going, hey, what did we do? Why did we sign this agreement?” Richard Allison said.
“I sent an email. Cancel the agreement. And then I sent a follow-up email. Cancel the agreement,” Caroline Allison said.
The agreement wasn’t canceled. The Allisons say their lawyer told them it was too late to make changes, and the lawyers were getting anxious for the payday they thought they were getting
“I said that I lost trust in them and that I wasn’t going to be signing anything else with them,” Caroline Allison said.
“I still don’t trust you, Jorge,” Caroline wrote. “I felt like you used your position of trust and confidentiality to get a better deal out of me.”
“It was about the money, wasn’t it?” Palacio said.
“I have responded to all your questions via the judgment, arbitration award,” Borunda said.
Borunda says the Allisons’ accusations are meritless, backed up by the outcomes of the legal proceedings.
But the Allisons were clearly playing in a system they knew nothing about.
“I hope this won’t hurt anybody’s feelings, but I had hope not to see you again,” Judge Copeland said.
Six months passed. And the Allisons had refused to sign the documents needed to finalize the agreement that they wanted to change.
“Are you going to be able to get these documents signed, Mr. Borunda?” Judge Copeland said.
“It is out of my hands at this point, Your Honor, to get those. I’ve been instructed by Caroline Allison to inform the court that she has lost confidence in my representation,” Borunda said.
“You have ordered it approved, you have ordered us to execute the documents, that order is a final order without appeal and I’m just trying to effectuate the order,” Micheal Collins said.
“Oh so the agreement could’ve appealed? Did the lawyers tell them that?” Dolcefino told the camera.
The step-mom is represented by Dallas lawyer Michael Collins, now retired. He tells the judge he didn’t know they were even fighting with their lawyers, that they opposed the deal that was made.
Even the judge went on the record defending the lawyer over the kids.
“I’ll tell you this. I don’t doubt him giving this case is all because I saw him do it,” Judge Copeland said.
“I’ve been in a lot of courtrooms, and judges are often way too nice to the lawyers. It’s like a club. But what if the lawyer’s advice sucked? Where do you go to get justice?” Dolcefino told the camera.
“You’re supposed to give them advice that’s best for them, not what’s best for you,” Palacio said.
“Thank you,” Abaza said.
“The judge was right about one thing. It clearly has gotten worse.” Dolcefino told the camera.
Caroline and Ric filed a malpractice lawsuit after they learned just how costly the advice had been.
It turned out they didn’t have to fight over their inheritance at all. It was guaranteed in their father’s will, a trust. They didn’t need lawyers to sue anyone.
“They could have just told us the truth, saying that, hey, you don’t have to do anything,” Richard Allison said.
It gets worse. According to this expert report, Borunda, Abaza, and Trevino had apparently given up about 15 million dollars in other assets in that early-morning mediated settlement deal.
“They just basically created a big mess,” Richard Allison said.
We looked at previous lawsuits. These same three lawyers, Borunda, Abaza, and Trevino, they were also sued for 1 million dollars back in 2016 and it’s a very similar complaint.
“They worked to obtain guaranteed quick cash and bring the suit to a rapid conclusion, to the great detriment to their fiduciary and their client.”
That lawsuit settled out of court.
“This is a great lesson for everyone out there. When you sign a contract with a lawyer, you should read the fine print. Because if you can in a fight with that lawyer, you have to do something called binding arbitration. You can’t argue to a jury. One person, a third party, will make the call. And that person is going to be a lawyer,” Dolcefino told the camera.
And that’s exactly the hand that Jorge Borunda played.
“We are going to invoke the arbitration agreement,” Borunda said.
“And that arbitration. If you believe the Allisons already got screwed, well buckle up, because it’s about to get worse,” Dolcefino told the camera.
And it’s why we went to Dallas to meet the arbitrator, former Dallas judge Anne Ashby. She had ignored our requests for an interview.
“I really can’t talk about this, and I don’t know who you are, and I’d appreciate you not following me. Thank you,” Anne Ashby said.
“My name is Wayne Dolcefino,” Dolcefino said.
She knew who I was because I introduced myself. I always do.
“I’m Wayne Dolcefino. I’m here to talk to you about the Allison case,” Dolcefino said.
“No thank you,” Ashby said.
There’s a ton of former judges and lawyers who serve as arbitrators in legal fights.
But why a Dallas arbitrator was chosen for a Houston legal fight? It was clearly more expensive with all the travel, but it was also curious. Was it part of the screw job that will come next?
“The family thinks a lot of things about this deal smell. Who first called you to become an arbitrator in this case? Judge?” Dolcefino said.
“I need you to stop following me,” Ashby said.
“Stay tuned. And wait till you see the ethics issues we’ve uncovered,” Dolcefino told the camera.
Keep up with us on social media:
