Cellino & Barnes — the personal-injury law firm with the famous, annoyingly catchy “Don’t wait! Call 8!” jingle — is officially kaput after a three-year, knock-down, drag-out legal battle, a source close to the case said Monday.
It was unclear who would get the rights to the former Buffalo firm’s commercial ditty, which includes the impossible-to-forget 1-800-888-8888 phone number.
The notorious legal battle erupted in 2017 when lawyer Ross Cellino Jr.
filed suit to break away from longtime law partner Stephen Barnes in an apparent disagreement over the company’s future.
Cellino said in court papers at one point that Barnes screamed at him, “Why the f–k would you want to f–k this up when you are making $10 million a year?!”
The battle gained such fame that it
even spawned an off-Broadway play, “Cellino v. Barnes,” in Brooklyn last year — and led to the warring parties eventually
using dueling jingles to drum up business as the case wound its way through court.
After three years of duking it out legally, Cellino
said in an affidavit in January that Barnes was finally ready to throw in the towel on their partnership.
But it took six more months before a confidential settlement between both sides was inked Monday, the well-placed source said.
The move ends Cellino’s lawsuit and will now “allow the parties to go forward with their new firms,” the source said.
The agreement also will settle
the lawsuit that Barnes’s longtime attorney girlfriend filed against Cellino in February, the source said. That suit claimed Cellino was “using [the female lawyer] to get back at Barnes” by withholding nearly $1 million she was owed in legal fees for her work on a case.
nypost.com
