An $11 million legal fee dispute between a lawyer and his former firm could finally be decided in a Montgomery County courtroom

The trial over who will be paid an eye-popping $11 million legal fee — the lawyer who signed as a client a ”horribly” burned 17-year-old cook or his former suburban law firm — began Monday in Montgomery County. Emotions were running high as the lawyer testified that the girl “made a decision to go with me.”

At one point, the attorney representing the Blue Bell law firm, Elliott Greenleaf, told Richard DeMarco, the attorney who signed the girl as a client after the 2014 explosion, to more directly answer his questions and stop the “10-minute diatribes.”

Montgomery County Judge Richard P. Haaz calmed the two sides in a case that looks at the sanctity of the attorney-client relationship — could the girl follow DeMarco to his new firm when he left Elliott Greenleaf — and contracts between law firms.

Elliott Greenleaf argues that DeMarco was an employee, the firm paid for his legal malpractice insurance, and he is not entitled to the $11 million referral fee, or even part of it. A referral fee is essentially a finder’s fee. In its court papers, Elliott Greenleaf says that DeMarco should pay as a penalty about $1,800 a day in interest for every day that it’s not paid.

DeMarco argues that the girl, Zoila Santos, who was 17 at the time of the accident and worked as a cook on a food truck, was his client and he was the only lawyer at Elliott Greenleaf with a relationship with her and her older brother, who acted on her behalf while she was a minor. The girl agreed when DeMarco left Elliott Greenleaf in late 2016 for another law firm that he should be paid. DeMarco testified that it was never the intention of the girl and her brother that he “be cut out” of the referral fee.

The legal dispute over the fee began in Philadelphia in 2018. Philadelphia litigator George Bochetto, who lost as a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in May’s Pennsylvania primary, represents DeMarco. Joseph Walsh, a Lansdale attorney, represents Greenleaf Elliott.

The dispute stems from the deadly La Parrillada Chapina food truck explosion in North Philadelphia in 2014 that killed business owner Olga Galdamez and her daughter, Jaylin, 17, and injured 11 others. One of those injured was Santos.

Her brother, a carpenter, contacted DeMarco through his employer in Philadelphia, DeMarco testified.

Within weeks of signing Santos as a client, Elliott Greenleaf — which is not a specialist in catastrophic injury cases — referred the case to Robert Mongeluzzi’s plaintiffs firm, Saltz Mongeluzzi & Bendesky, to investigate and litigate.

The referral fee deal worked this way: Saltz Mongeluzzi & Bendesky worked for a 40% contingency fee if Santos settled or won at trial, while agreeing to pay 40% of this contingency fee as a referral fee.

At first the truck explosion looked like a no-win for lawyers and victims with no apparent deep pockets to pay damages. But plaintiffs lawyers soon learned that a 100-pound propane tank on the La Parrillada Chapina truck was manufactured in the 1940s, according to court documents in Philadelphia.

U-Haul Co. of Pennsylvania and the former general manager of its Feltonville operation later pleaded guilty in federal court to two counts each of violating hazardous-materials training regulations related to the food-truck explosion.

In April 2018, Mongeluzzi informed DeMarco and Elliott Greenleaf of the $160 million settlement, which was split among injured victims and the Galdamez estate, as well as lawyers.

When the case was settled, plaintiffs’ lawyers called it the largest pretrial settlement in Pennsylvania state court history.

Santos — who has has undergone skin-grafting procedures and suffered neurological injuries, post-traumatic disorder, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain — received about $70 million.

Neither DeMarco nor Elliott Greenleaf did substantial legal work but the settlement spun off an $11 million referral fee.

After the settlement and as the fee dispute escalated, the Mongeluzzi firm parked the $11 million now up for grabs in Haaz’s courtroom in escrow.

Benjamin Baer, an attorney with the Mongeluzzi firm, testified on Monday that his firm is “holding the money and we are ready to pay it.” Baer, who came to know Santos through the litigation, said that DeMarco “was involved with the family and a comfort to the family.”

The trial is expected to continue Tuesday.