Fieger vs. Morse: Detroit’s legal titans spar over lawsuit

May 22--In this corner, Geoffrey Fieger, who parlayed the fame of defending Dr. Jack Kevorkian into a lucrative law practice suing corporations and their insurance companies.

In the other corner, civil litigator Mike Morse, whose ubiquitous local TV commercials constantly remind viewers that "Mike Wins."

Now, the two celebrity attorneys, whose law offices sit half a mile apart in Southfield, are facing off in a lawsuit Fieger filed on behalf of Renee Swain, who claims Morse groped her April 6 in a tony Farmington Hills restaurant. Swain claims Morse later tried to pressure her out of reporting it in a conversation she secretly recorded with the help of police.

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Morse calls the lawsuit "complete and utter nonsense," adding that Fieger is "angry with me because a former client of his fired him and hired me and I settled the case for a substantial amount of money."

Fieger, 66, scoffs at the suggestion that Morse, 49, is eating into his business, saying he'd never heard of Morse before he saw his TV commercials.

"He's a guy on TV. He doesn't do what I do," Fieger told the Free Press.

"You've got the tail wagging the dog. You're talking to the dog right now. Tails don't wag me."

Several lawyers contacted by the Free Press this past week acknowledge that the case is the talk of the legal community, but most didn't want to comment.

"My official comment is I have no comment," said Ven Johnson, another well-known plaintiff attorney who split from Fieger's firm in 2011 over a money dispute that became a public battle.

Even Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper, whose office would have to approve any criminal charges, doesn't want to weigh in on it. She's asked the Michigan Attorney General's Office to assign the review of any warrant request to another prosecutor because she knows Morse, who hosted a campaign fund-raiser for Cooper at his office last May.

"We're trying to find another county for them," said Cooper's top assistant, Paul Walton. "We want to avoid even the appearance of conflict."

Walton said Farmington Hills police had alerted the prosecutor's office last Monday that Fieger planned a news conference, but said they have not submitted a warrant request.

Farmington HIlls Police Chief Chuck Nebus confirmed the investigation but said he couldn't discuss it while it's pending.

"If we do establish probable cause that a crime was committed and identify a suspect we believe did it, we will present a warrant request," Nebus said. "We'll present it to the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office or wherever we're directed to by the attorney general."

The two men are household names in metro Detroit because of years of television advertisements.

When Fieger is beginning a trial, his first question to potential jurors is typically: "Do you know who I am?"

Inevitably, most jurors respond yes.

Fieger became famous defending assisted suicide practitioner Dr. Jack Kevorkian. His website bills Fieger as "America's most famous trial lawyer" and lists dozens of jury verdicts and case settlements worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Fieger ran for governor in 1998, losing badly to incumbent John Engler.

Just three days before announcing the lawsuit against Morse, Fieger said on a taping of of WKAR-TV's "Off the Record." that he's considering another run next year and even discussed presidential ambitions.

Fieger also has been known to fight dirty in fights with high-profile opponents.

He called Engler "a fat ugly sonofabitch," suggested Engler had engaged in barnyard miscegenation, and made derogatory comments about Engler's young, triplet daughters.

The Michigan Attorney Discipline Board reprimanded Fieger for remarks he made in 1999 on a radio show referring to Michigan Court of Appeals judges as "jackasses" adding lewd suggestions about sodomy regarding the judges.

In 2005, then-Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox accused Fieger of orchestrating a plot of trying to blackmail him into dropping an investigation of Fieger over possible campaign-finance violations. Cox said Fieger threatened to expose an affair Cox had and claimed he had secretly taped conversations.

Investigators in Oakland County reviewed Fieger's conduct and concluded there wasn't enough evidence to charge him with a crime.

Fieger advertises heavily on television now, but over the years, he has appeared almost as frequently in news stories. He was a constant on the evening news during the Kevorkian era, standing beside the man whose name became synonymous with assisted suicide.

His winning lawsuit against Warner Bros. and the "Jenny Jones Show" drew national headlines, as did his defense of Nathaniel Abraham, an 11-year-old Pontiac boy charged with, and convicted of, second-degree murder.

Fieger's law practice has made him wealthy. He lives in a mansion in Bloomfield Hills and flies on private aircraft to his beachfront compound on the Caribbean island of Anguilla. In 2011, he donated $4 million to Michigan State University's law school to establish a trial practice institute bearing his name.

Morse is known more for his TV presence than his courtroom presence. His advertisements frequently feature his mother, who offers a folksy spin on his "Mike Wins" slogan.

Morse also has supplied tens of thousands of backpacks filled with school supplies to Detroit schoolchildren.

Morse's websites lists 33 lawyers with the firm and bills it as "Michigan's largest personal injury law firm with more than 20 years of experience and $250 Million Dollars in settlements in the last 3 years alone."

But he's had his own troubles as well. Last year, the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission filed a four-count complaint charging Morse with improperly soliciting an accident victim who later became a client and also for taking excessive fees.

Earlier this month, the commission agreed to drop the charges against Morse.

The Grievance Commission is still pursuing Morse for taking what the commission calls an improperly large cut of the same accident victim's no-fault benefits during the six-month period when her auto insurer was voluntarily paying benefits and no lawsuit by Morse's firm had yet been filed.

Jules Olsman, a longtime plaintiff lawyer who practices from a Berkley office, said he couldn't judge the merits of the claims, but knows it makes all lawyers look bad.

"I think it's an unfortunate spectacle that does not portray the legal profession in the best light," Olsman said. "It's very tarnishing. They damage a profession that's already, in terms of public respect, very low."

Olsman said he knows both men.

He said he's on friendly terms with Fieger and worked years ago for Fieger's father, Bernard Fieger. Olsman is neighbors with Morse's ex-wife and his daughters.

Olsman said civil suits often are held off until the criminal case is complete. The criminal case can make or break a lawsuit claim, he said.

"A lot's going to depend on what the Farmington Hills Police Department does," Olsman said. "I don't know what's on those tapes."

Contact John Wisely: 248-858-2262 or [email protected]. On Twitter @jwisely.

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