Boom-boom lawyers too cozy?

Four of the plaintiffs are preparing to file a motion in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that would remove their longtime attorneys, Mary Stowell and Linda Friedman, from the case. Beth Walker, a former Smith Barney employee maintains that the Chicago firm of Stowell & Friedman has become too cozy with Smith Barney, a unit of Citigroup. She says the lawyers have agreed to continuances harmful to clients' interests. Ms. Walker points out that although Judge Constance Baker Motley approved a settlement last year of up to $12 million in legal fees to Stowell & Friedman, the plaintiffs have yet to receive their share. Under the settlement, Smith Barney was supposed to make offers in July to each plaintiff, but continuances pushed the date back to Nov. 21. Mediators will hear the cases of plaintiffs who reject the offers. "I'm willing to live with the settlement," says Ms. Walker. "But we're going into a year with this thing." Ms. Stowell and Ms. Friedman argue that the delays are typical for a complex class action with 22,000 plaintiffs. They say individual awards, when distributed, should range from a few thousand to several hundred thousand dollars each. Ms. Stowell and Ms. Friedman also contend that the law firms retained by the dissident plaintiffs--Spriggs & Davis in Tallahassee, Fla., and Sprenger & Lang in Minneapolis--have manipulated their clients in a bid to get their hands on millions of dollars in legal fees yet to be paid out. Kent Spriggs of Spriggs & Davis declined to comment. Sprenger & Lang could not be reached. The original class action stemmed from allegations made by employees of a Smith Barney brokerage in Garden City, L.I. The most lurid claims involved a downstairs "boom-boom room," where male managers allegedly groped and verbally harassed female subordinates.