Unauthorized Settlement — Legal Malpractice in Georgia
Your attorney settled your case without your knowledge or consent. You never agreed to the amount. You may not have even known the case was resolved until it was too late. This is not a gray area — it is a serious violation of the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct and one of the most actionable forms of legal malpractice.
Your Right to Control Settlement Decisions
Under Georgia Rule of Professional Conduct 1.2, an attorney must abide by a client’s decisions concerning the objectives of representation, including whether to settle a civil matter. This is a non-delegable decision. Your attorney cannot settle your case — at any amount, for any reason — without your explicit, informed consent. Period.
What Typically Happens
Unauthorized settlements often involve one or more of the following:
- The attorney settles without contacting the client at all
- The attorney presents a settlement as a fait accompli — “the best I could do” — after agreeing to it without authorization
- The attorney forges the client’s signature on settlement documents
- The attorney accepts a settlement in order to quickly collect fees, against the client’s interest
- The attorney misrepresents the terms of a settlement to obtain consent that would otherwise not be given
When Funds Are Mishandled
In the worst cases, unauthorized settlements are accompanied by misappropriation of funds — the attorney settles, receives the check, and either keeps a disproportionate portion or never distributes the proceeds to the client at all. This crosses from malpractice into fraud and potentially criminal theft. I pursue all available civil claims in these situations.
What You Can Recover
You may be entitled to recover the difference between what your case was actually worth and what you received (or what was stolen from you), plus damages for breach of fiduciary duty, conversion, fraud, and in appropriate cases, punitive damages.