Cassuto v. Shulick

David Shulick (defendant) was an attorney from Pennsylvania who represented Stone Commercial Brokerage (Stone). In connection with a lawsuit in New York in which Stone was a party, Shulick engaged Jeffrey Cassuto (plaintiff) as local counsel. Cassuto was later dismissed as local counsel. When the matter settled, Cassuto sought payment of his attorney’s fees out of the settlement proceeds. A dispute developed between Shulick and Cassuto regarding the fees. At one point, Cassuto emailed a group of the parties involved in the Stone litigation to notify them that he was charging a lien on the settlement proceeds and to demand that he be listed as an attorney on the settlement documents and on the settlement check. The subject line of the email displayed the word settlement and the caption of the lawsuit. The parties copied on the email included not only Cassuto and Shulick, but the named plaintiff in the Stone case, the chief executive officer of Stone, and a number of other attorneys. In response to Cassuto’s email, Shulick sent an email in reply to all of the parties, stating that Cassuto was apparently under the influence of a substance, and that substance abuse was the reason that he was previously terminated from the representation. Cassuto filed a defamation action against Shulick, arguing that Shulick’s statement constituted libel per se. In response, Shulick argued that the alleged defamatory statement was privileged because it was pertinent to a judicial proceeding and, therefore, could not form the basis of a defamation action. Cassuto argued that the judicial-proceedings privilege did not apply because he was former counsel in the litigation and no longer actively involved in the proceeding.