In a lawsuit filed by Sears, Roebuck against Goldstone & Sudalter, federal District Judge Richard G. Stearns found that Daniel W. Goldstone's law firm bilked Sears out of more than $800,000 through two fraudulent billing schemes. Writing in a 1996 order, Stearns said, "the conclusion is inescapable that Goldstone devised a scheme to defraud Sears by billing it for hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal fees and costs that he had no good reason to believe were legitimate." (page 8) He also said Goldstone's conduct toward Sears was "of the kind that would confirm the public's worst suspicion of lawyerly greed." (page 16)