SARASOTA, Fla.– LAWFUEL – The Law Firm Newswire –Phillip Wasserman and Phillip Roy Financial Services, one of the nation’s leading sellers of annuities and life insurance, have filed suit against Ft. Lauderdale based attorney John Hargrove and the firm of Gordon, Hargrove and James alleging malicious prosecution and other claims for relief. Phillip Wasserman and Phillip Roy Financial Services allege that Hargrove and his firm engaged in a scheme to defraud the courts by alleging that multi-millionaire retirees are not of sound mind to purchase annuities but yet are of sound mind to contract with them as attorneys. Wasserman and his firm also allege that Hargrove and his firm have filed dozens of similar cases in Florida courts as part of an overall scheme of coercion and have misrepresented their clients’ mental health in order to recover attorney’s fees.

The suit comes from a case where Stanley and Eleanor Weisman, multi-millionaires, sued Allianz Life Insurance Company over a purchase of an annuity. Wasserman was named as a defendant because he owned the Phillip Roy Financial Services firm, even though the sale was made by an independent sales representative.

The Weismans, who are also defendants in the suit against Hargrove, dismissed the suit against Wasserman and Phillip Roy Financial Services after Wasserman provided Hargrove and his firm with 30 days notice to dismiss their lawsuit or be subject to sanctions and money damages for filing a frivolous lawsuit.

“Our position is that John Hargrove runs television ads to entice potential clients and then makes false allegations to collect attorney fees,” said Phillip Wasserman in a released statement.

“He then makes derogatory allegations to the press about financial services firms, all the while simultaneously alleging the public is a `vulnerable adult’ incapable of understanding contractual relationships with anyone but himself and his firm. I look forward to a jury verdict that will expose his wrongdoing.”

NEW ORLEANS– LAWFUEL – Law Blogs & Legal News – McGlinchey Stafford’s CAFA Law Blog – www.cafalawblog.com – was recognized yet again for its outstanding content, this time as one of the nation’s 77 most influential legal blogs (blawg), by TechnoLawyer in its recently released e-book, Blawg World 2007.

Blawg World 2007 features the best essays of the year from its pick of the most influential blawgs, and highlighted McGlinchey Stafford’s entry Down Goes Frazier, written by CAFA Law Blog co-founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief Hunter Twiford and former analyst Adam Gates – http://www.cafalawblog.com/-case-summaries-down-goes-frazier-9th-c ircuit-judges-engage-in-judicial-fisticuffs-to-determine-whether-the-c ourtas-panel-opinion-construing-cafaas-time-limit-on-appeals-should-be -reviewed-en-banc.html. (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser’s address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

Blawg World 2007, in recognizing the blog and McGlinchey Stafford’s efforts, contained the following description in “About the Blawgs:”

The CAFA Law Blog is the leading online resource for information, case analyses, and insights regarding the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, better known as “CAFA.”

Since the CAFA Law Blog’s inception, the McGlinchey Stafford attorneys creating, writing for and editing the blog have worked hard to use a non-legalistic, entertaining writing style to report on legal issues that arise under CAFA. Their objective has been – and continues to be – to have fun writing the blog, and to distinguish themselves from the pack through their creative posts, and they don’t mind poking a little fun at themselves and each other from time to time. The highlighted CAFA Law Blog post, Down Goes Frazier, exemplifies the blog’s non-traditional writing approach and light tone, despite the serious legal issues covered by the blog.

About CAFA Law Blog – www.cafalawblog.com

McGlinchey Stafford, PLLC publishes the CAFA Law Blog, an interactive web site found at www.cafalawblog.com. The CAFA Law Blog is the leading online resource for the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, and virtually every case involving CAFA issues decided anywhere in the country is available on the blog, with commentary and analysis of the decisions. The blog, in its efforts to provide “one-stop CAFA shopping,” also highlights law review and other scholarly articles on CAFA topics, information about relevant seminars, “guest posts” by professors and other practitioners, vendors offering CAFA-related services and other resources.

About McGlinchey Stafford, PLLC

McGlinchey Stafford is a national full-service commercial and defense law firm with approximately 170 attorneys in eight locations in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio and New York. The firm is recognized nationwide for its extensive practice in the field of class action defense, and has represented Fortune 500 companies across the country in hundreds of consumer class actions in state, federal and bankruptcy courts, arbitration proceedings, and Multi-District Litigation. McGlinchey Stafford’s class action defense attorneys have represented clients in class action matters across a wide array of fields, including class actions involving consumer financial services, banking, labor and employment, consumer fraud and deceptive trade practices, advertising, product liability, insurance, telecommunications, environmental, mass tort, healthcare, and public utilities claims and issues.