Florida Lawyer Collects Almost $1M in Fake Lawsuit Settlements

November 20, 2019

A Davie lawyer, Stuart Finkelstein, was arrested on Tuesday for collecting nearly $1M by filing over 300 unauthorized lawsuits on behalf of disabled Americans in New York and Florida. Finkelstein allegedly stole the identities of two individuals and filed lawsuits claiming they were unable to access public establishments that they had never tried to go in. Neither of the people had ever hired Finklestein as an attorney to represent them.

Finkelstein made false representations to small businesses, obstructed official judicial proceedings, and then settled the fake lawsuits to collect about $930,000 in attorney fees. Micheline Gaulin, a restaurant owner in Manhattan’s West Village, told the NY Post that she paid over $18,000 in a settlement to Finklestein in which she called “a legal shakedown.”

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