A former Fox Rothschild attorney stands accused of stealing 170,000 documents from that firm, including a local homebuilder’s most sensitive secrets, in the months before he switched sides and went to work for a firm suing the homebuilder.
Adam Gentile “breached some of the most fundamental duties a lawyer owes to his or her client — those of confidentiality and loyalty — by stealing tens of thousands of his client’s files to fuel his new career on the other side of the v,” Century Communities alleged in a lawsuit June 25, using an industry term for switching from a defense attorney to plaintiff’s attorney.
Gentile, of Wheat Ridge, has been licensed to practice law in Colorado for 20 years and has never been reprimanded by the Colorado Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel. He worked for Lottner Rubin Fishman Saul before Fox Rothschild acquired it in 2013.
For a dozen years after the merger, Gentile was one of Century’s primary lawyers, defending it against construction defect lawsuits and arbitration cases. By Century’s count, Gentile worked on 135 matters and billed the Greenwood Village-based homebuilder for 10,500 hours of work. He knew its vulnerabilities, its strategies, its finances, its expert consultants.
Gentile submitted his resignation from Fox Rothschild on April 14, 2025, according to Century’s lawsuit. The next day, the firm’s chief information security officer reportedly determined that Gentile had moved 169,777 firm files to external hard drives over the prior three months.
Gentile left Fox Rothschild for Hearn & Fleener, a small Denver firm known for suing developers. Hearn & Fleener sued Century six times while Gentile was at Fox Rothschild and has two pending, multimillion-dollar arbitration cases against it now, according to Century.
“Mr. Gentile took Century’s documents intentionally, over a period of months, while planning to join Hearn & Fleener — the very law firm that regularly sues Century — without any notice or disclosure to Century,” the homebuilder alleges in its lawsuit.
Hearn & Fleener partner Shane Fleener, who hired Gentile, says the lawsuit is old hat.
“This filing follows Century’s unsuccessful efforts to disqualify our firm over the same underlying dispute, efforts that were rejected multiple times and by two judges after the evidence was heard,” Fleener told BusinessDen. “We’re confident this will fare no better.”
Century is suing Gentile for theft, negligence and breach of fiduciary duty. It wants a Denver judge to prohibit him from keeping or using any stolen documents. Century’s lawyers are Jeff Pagliuca and Jim Fogg with Haddon, Morgan and Foreman in Denver, who declined to discuss it.
Fox Rothschild’s managing partner for Denver, Caleb Durling, declined an interview request.
