Firms Pay Up When They Play Discovery Games in Promissory Note FINRA Employment Arbitration

Unlike most law firms we at Meissner Associates aggressively seek discovery in all our arbitration cases, so when we encounter a firm like Citizens Securities, the brokerage arm of Citizens Bank, along with their large well known law firm Greenburg Traurig playing games avoiding our discovery demands in arbitration we did what we normally do, we filed a Motion to Compel and fought for sanctions to send the right message from the start.

After a hard fought oral argument, on December 21, 2016 we were notified (SEE DECISION BELOW) that we won our Motion and besides being ordered to produce a slew of documents and information to assist our client Citizens was ordered to pay $5000 immediately for attorney fees and for their delay, along with an additional $1,000 per day for every day they failed to produce the requested documents past the given deadline. No doubt the Order sent a message to Citizens and their attorneys that this was not a game and they are already behind the 8 ball in the arbitration in annoying the Chairmanof the FINRA Panel. While winning arbitrations involving promissory notes are not always easy, ones where the broker has valid claims which form the basis for unkept promises of books of business, as this one did, and other carrots to cause a broker to leave one firm to join another which turn out to be false and hurt their careers, are a solid basis to fight back, and it appears this is one of those cases.

 We continue on with discovery, but do so knowing that our careful arbitrator selection and screening of our client's claims appear to have been on the mark. If you were misled when being recruited and those false promises negatively impacted your career, you may have an independent claim against the firm for damages, in addition to being able to fight against collection of those golden handcuff promissory notes. As in our firm's motto - "one can be David and take on Goliath".

Call Meissner Associates,  FINRA Attorneys
Nationwide Representation for FINRA Arbitrations
212-764-3100
* Prior results cannot and do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome with respect to any future matter, including yours