Battle between Carabin Shaw law firm, ex-partner Kirsten Carabin escalates
The San Antonio Express
Five weeks after the Carabin Shaw law firm got ex-partner Kirsten Carabin to take down carabin-shaw.com, the website promoting her new practice, she’s filed a countersuit to stop her former firm from using her name.
Kirsten Carabin and her firm Carabin Law wants a federal court in San Antonio to cancel its trademark registration for “Carabin Shaw” and order her former husband, James “Jamie” Shaw, and his firm to cease using her surname.
She alleges Shaw and his firm did not have her “express written consent to use her name” and “committed, at a minimum, fraud” when registering “Carabin Shaw” as a trademark.
Ricardo Cedillo, a San Antonio attorney representing Carabin Shaw and Shaw, said his clients have a legal right to use the Carabin name under a deal long ago reached with Kirsten Carabin.
“She is a lawyer who made a contractual agreement decades ago and now wants to rewrite it,” Cedillo said. “She is a lawyer who should know better than to to recycle claims disposed of in a Final Judgment she and her very competent lawyers voluntarily entered into 20 years ago.”
Adam Poncio, one of Kirsten Carabin’s lawyers, said he was prohibited from commenting “by agreement.”
Both Carabin Shaw and Carabin Law specialize in personal injury law.
‘Carabin minus Shaw’
The legal tussle started after Carabin registered the website carabin-shaw.com. “Carabin minus Shaw,” her site proclaimed. “Pick the better half.”
In a federal lawsuit filed Jan. 28, Shaw said her website was “confusingly similar” to his firm’s site — carabinshaw.com — and “will likely create confusion” for those in the market for legal services.
While married, Shaw and Carabin opened Carabin & Shaw in 1995. They divorced in 1999 but continued to work together at the firm until 2003, when she retired from the practice of law, Shaw and his firm alleged.
He purchased all of Kirsten Carabin’s interest in Carabin & Shaw, including the carabinshaw.com website, the suit said. It added that she granted Carabin & Shaw the right to use her surname as part of the firm’s name.
“She willingly released her interest in that firm and in that name and received substantial compensation from the firm for it decades ago,” Shaw said in a Jan. 29 text.
On Jan. 31, she voluntarily took down the website a few hours before a federal court hearing during which she agreed to a temporary restraining order that required her “to immediately suspend, discontinue, terminate or otherwise remove all content” from the site.
“I’d like to get my name back,” she said after the hearing.
Carabin & Shaw became Carabin Shaw in late 2022. The firm filed to trademark “Call Shaw,” a tagline it is now using to promote the firm, in July. The application is pending.
Agreements
Kirsten Carabin offered a much different version of events over the use of her surname in her answer to her ex-firm’s lawsuit and her counterclaims.
When she split from the firm in 2003, she says, she gave Shaw “the right to use the names ‘Carabin & Shaw’ and ‘Carabin & Shaw PC’ during this period in connection with his ongoing option of the law firm.” In addition, the filing adds, the firm agreed to provide her periodic payments and to buy out her interests.
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