Elijah McClain’s mother is accusing her former lawyer of misconduct.
Back in November, Aurora settled with McClain’s family for $15 million for his death at the hands of police and the paramedics who injected him with a deadly dose of ketamine.
In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, his mother Sheneen McClain claims lawyers at the firm Killmer, Lane & Newman are demanding nearly $4 million in attorneys fees — even though she fired them long before they did any significant settlement work on her behalf.
She claims she fired the law firm for putting their own publicity ahead of her own interests. She also claims the law firm advocated against her once she fired them and they continued to represent Elijah McClain’s father.
Sheneen McClain is asking a judge to rule that she does not owe the firm the $4 million they’re asking for.
The law firm issued this statement in response to the lawsuit:
We are proud of our legal team’s work to obtain accountability for the death of Elijah McClain. The allegations against us are misleading and in many cases entirely false, and we stand by our hard work that helped achieve the largest civil rights settlement in Colorado history. We hope that this misdirected anger does not distract from the important goals of continuing to force change in Aurora’s policing and criminal accountability for Elijah’s killers.
