A 73-year-old Marietta craftsman has been awarded $4.3 million after an arbitrator found that Morgan & Morgan settled his personal injury case for $45,000 without his consent. Robert Wyrosdick says he never approved the settlement, which the firm's assigned attorney reached on his behalf while he was dealing mostly with a paralegal for the remainder of his case.
Wyrosdick hired Morgan & Morgan to represent him after a serious vehicle accident in March 2023 in Marietta left him with back injuries, according to WSB-TV. The underlying lawsuit was originally filed by Morgan & Morgan in Gwinnett County State Court in July 2023 against a box truck driver and their employer, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Wyrosdick says he spoke with only one attorney during the case before the firm settled it in 2024, without his input.
An American Arbitration Association arbitrator, Standard Birg, sided with Wyrosdick and his attorneys, granting all three counts of his claim in their entirety and finding Morgan & Morgan PLLC and former associate attorney Corey Aitken jointly liable for legal malpractice, breach of contract, and breach of fiduciary duty. The award broke down into $3,150,000 in punitive damages, $450,000 in compensatory damages, and $250,000 in emotional distress damages, per WSB-TV's review of the arbitration decision. On top of those sums, Morgan & Morgan was ordered to pay $413,180.33 in attorney's fees, $37,737.50 in fees and costs Wyrosdick had already incurred, $37,125 for arbitrator compensation and expenses, and $19,175 in administrative fees.
Firm Says Consent Was Given, Just Not in Writing
Morgan & Morgan disputes Wyrosdick's account of the settlement and asserted during arbitration that he had not proven his claims or suffered harm, seeking rejection of the punitive damages award. CEO Alexander Clem told media that the assigned attorney had received verbal consent from Wyrosdick for the $45,000 settlement but simply failed to document it in writing, and said the firm strongly disagreed with the arbitrator's findings. WSB-TV reported that Morgan & Morgan has not provided the outlet with a response, though the firm did dispute Wyrosdick's version of events elsewhere.
Clem also defended the firm's broader operations, stating that Morgan & Morgan's Atlanta office alone has settled nearly 50,000 cases over the past five years and that less than 0.0002% of its Georgia cases ever lead to a malpractice claim. The dispute unfolded outside public view because Wyrosdick's representation contract, signed on April 8, 2023, contained a mandatory arbitration clause requiring grievances against the firm to be resolved through private American Arbitration Association proceedings rather than before a jury in court, a provision detailed in filings reviewed by the Georgia legal blog Davis & Adams.
Not an Isolated Dispute, Attorney Testifies
Roswell attorney Warren Hinds testified during Wyrosdick's arbitration that he had represented another former Morgan & Morgan client in a separate malpractice arbitration against the firm, one that was confidentially settled shortly after Wyrosdick's award was disclosed. Arbitration filings also revealed internal disputes at the firm, where Morgan & Morgan formally argued against assertions that Aitken had been low-balling case settlements on his way out the door to boost his own compensation, according to Daily Report Online.
Under Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct 1.2 and 1.4, attorneys are ethically required to abide by a client's decisions concerning settlement offers and maintain prompt communication so clients can make informed decisions, standards cited by the State Bar of Georgia that formed the regulatory basis for the breach of fiduciary duty finding. Wyrosdick's attorneys, Michael Flint and Mary Ellen Lighthiser of McClure & Kornheiser, said their client took his fiduciary-duty claims to arbitration to hold the high-volume firm accountable. They said Wyrosdick simply wanted a lawyer to help him navigate his injury rather than a firm that would settle his case without his input and elevate its own interests above his.
A Mega-Firm's Scale Under Scrutiny
Wyrosdick's legal team said the arbitrator appeared to view the case as part of Morgan & Morgan's broader business model, one built on massive advertising spending and high case volume. Founder John Morgan announced in 2026 that the firm planned to spend $600 million on advertising in a single year, with long-term projections pushing annual marketing expenditures toward $1 billion, a scale of spending underscored by Daily Report Online. That advertising engine feeds a caseload so large that the firm says malpractice claims are statistically rare, even as this case and Hinds's testimony suggest such disputes are more common than the settled-and-sealed arbitration system tends to reveal.
Morgan & Morgan's practices have drawn scrutiny in other recent matters as well. The firm's attorneys represented a victim in a separate Marietta massage parlor case, and a Morgan & Morgan attorney was barred by a Boston judge earlier this year over fake AI-generated citations. The firm has also sued the Florida Bar over restrictions on celebrity endorsements in its advertising, even as it continues its rapid expansion, including a new office tower it leased in downtown Raleigh this summer.
