Anyone who has been following the NFL since 2021 knows the name Tony Buzbee. He arrived on the scene as the lawyer representing the first plaintiff who sued then-Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson for misconduct during massage-therapy sessions.
Eventually, Buzbee represented more than 20 plaintiffs against Watson.
Most recently, Buzbee settled a lawsuit on behalf of a woman who claimed that Hall of Fame tight end Shannon Sharpe committed sexual assault. After the lawsuit was filed in April, Sharpe attacked Buzbee personally, claiming among other things that he “targets Black men.”
In a new Esquire profile, Buzbee responded to that claim.
“I didn’t wake up one morning and say, ‘I want to sue Shannon Sharpe.’ He has no relevance in my life,” Buzbee said, via Sean Keeley of AwfulAnnouncing.com. “I actually think he’s very entertaining when he yells and screams and talks about sports that he’s not involved in. But if I think it’s a legitimate case, then I pursue it. And I think this is worth my time.”
Buzbee’s business model, if he’s doing it properly (and the results would suggest he is), doesn’t discriminate. He told Esquire that he receives as a fee roughly 40 percent of any recovery his clients get.
That’s how the American civil justice system works. Individuals who have grievances and who can’t afford to pay lawyers by the hour hire them based on a contingency fee. This creates a strong business incentive for those lawyers to take good cases, not weak ones.
The question of whether a case is worth pursuing has three prongs: clarity of liability, amount of damages, and the ability to collect on a settlement or verdict.
Beyond that, nothing else should matter. And given that Sharpe’s lawyer immediately admitted that at least $10 million was offered to settle the case before it was filed and that the case was eventually settled without Sharpe ever responding to the civil complaint, chances are that Buzbee walked away from the Sharpe case with at least $4 million in fees.
That’s how it works. Find strong cases, pursue strong cases, settle or try strong cases. Buzbee did that after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, generating more than $500 million for more than 10 thousand clients who pursued claims against BP.
“I guess a bunch of old white men could say I’m targeting them, and a bunch of multinational corporations could say I’m targeting them as well,” Buzbee said. “I guess you could say I was targeting BP. . . . Well, I probably was targeting BP.”
That’s how it works. For anyone who represents individuals on a contingency fee.
For Buzbee, the Watson case made him a go-to choice for anyone with valid claims against current or former NFL players. Without the Watson cases, there’s a good chance the plaintiff in the Sharpe case wouldn’t have known Buzbee’s name.
That also explains Buzbee’s publicity-driven style. At a time when plenty of lawyers advertise their services with gigantic billboards and goofy TV commercials, the best advertisement remains free advertisement from news coverage. Buzbee knows that. His business thrives on that.
And there’s no reason to pursue a weak case simply to harass someone.
That said, a case that seemed strong can turn out to be weak, if the lawyer mistakenly believed a client whose story didn’t hold up under scrutiny. That’s what may have happened in Buzbee’s misadventures with Jay-Z, which resulted in the plaintiff acknowledging inconsistencies in the story she was telling about allegations of rape when she was 13 and the case eventually being dismissed without a settlement.
The Esquire profile contains this curious statement: “Buzbee later withdrew from the case because he has not been admitted to practice law in the Southern District of New York.” The presence of that assertion in the final product, frankly, shows that whoever wrote and/or edited the story has no idea how the legal system works.
Lawyers licensed in one jurisdiction routinely seek and receive what’s known as pro hac vice (Latin, “for this occasion”) admission in other jurisdictions in a specific case. As long as a local lawyer who is licensed to practice in that court is personally involved in the case, pro hac vice admission is routinely granted.
Actually, that’s how Buzbee pursued Sharpe. The primary lawyer on the complaint filed in Las Vegas was Nevada lawyer Micah D. Nash. Buzbee’s name appears on the document below Nash’s, with this designation: “Pro Hac [Vice] Forthcoming.”
This doesn’t mean Buzbee was targeting Jay-Z because of his race. The more plausible explanation is that Buzbee took on a case that ended up being far weaker than he thought it was, so he found a way to retreat. Of course, he’s now facing a lawsuit from Jay-Z claiming that the lawsuit sparked $190 million in business losses.
Unfortunately for Buzbee, he’s got the money that would make him a target for a lawyer who represents plaintiffs on a contingency fee.
That’s the primary motivation in this specific form of legal practice. It’s good business to take strong cases with significant damages against defendants who have money.
The personal characteristics of the defendants do not matter. All that matters is: (1) did they do something they shouldn’t have done?; (2) did those actions cause tangible and significant harm?; and (3) can they easily write a check to make things right?
