Ex-Associate's Website Mocking Local Firm Shut Down in Settlement

The former Levinson Axelrod associate who launched a website mocking the firm —and got sued for it — has quietly settled the litigation and shut down the page.

Though a nondisclosure agreement covers the settlement terms, the site, levinsonaxelrodreallysucks.com, is no more.

Edward Heyburn, who spent six years at the Edison, N.J.-based personal injury firm and is now a Robbinsville, N.J., solo, will say only that "the parties have resolved their differences and all pending actions have been dismissed."

Several Levinson Axelrod partners who were targets of Heyburn's online barbs — Richard Levinson, Ronald Grayzel and David Wheaton — did not return calls requesting comment about the end of the litigation.

The lawyer they hired to sue Heyburn, Thomas Cafferty of Scarinci Hollenbeck in Lyndhurst, N.J., said: "The matter has been resolved. That's all I'm at liberty to say."

U.S. District Judge Anne Thompson in Trenton ordered the case dismissed on June 16, because the parties settled. The deal was apparently struck sometime in early June, after most of the firm's claims in Levinson Axelrod v. Heyburn survived a motion to dismiss.

Heyburn worked at Levinson Axelrod from 1998 until he was fired in April 2004, when the firm learned he was making plans to leave and take clients.

It was not until September 2009 that he launched his gripe site. In the interim, he had been litigating with the firm over client files, vacation pay and referral fees, Heyburn said in an interview last October. He said he started the website to "tell the truth" about the firm because "when I see all their advertisements, I think it's a fraud and they're not who they represent themselves to be."

The original address for his website was levinsonaxelrod.net, and a Google search for Levinson Axelrod would bring up the link right below the official firm addresses, levinsonax ...