Attorney A hires Attorney B to help in a big antitrust law case, and promises 10% of the fee will go to Attorney B.  When Attorney A is paid, he refused to send 10% to attorney B.  From there, it all goes bad, and after 10 years, Attorney A has to pay not $ 23,000, but rather $ 250,000.

Law.Com reports: "Refusing to pay $28,000 in attorney fees a decade ago has turned into a more than $250,000 headache for Houston attorney Robert S. "Bob" Bennett.

In an Aug. 16 memorandum opinion in Bennett v. Coghlan, a three-justice panel of Houston’s 1st Court of Appeals affirmed an award of tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees that lawyer Kelly Coghlan says he had to run up trying to collect attorney fees Bennett owed him .Coghlan says Bennett received about $250,000 of the approximately $9 million in attorneys’ fees the federal court awarded after the Mrs. Baird’s litigation settled in 1996, but Bennett refused to pay Coghlan’s bill for $28,000 and instead sent him a check for $5,000 on April 3, 1997. But Coghlan says he returned Bennett’s check.

"He sort of gave me a tip," Coghlan says. "I took umbrage at that."