Injury Lawyers Cellino & Barnes – They Should Have Had it All

Jan 8, 2025 by Two Sues On the Aisle

By Two Sues on the Aisle, Susie Rosenbluth and Sue Weston

Eight hundred, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, a familiar phone number of Cellino & Barnes shared on billboards, jingles, and catchy commercials. Their jingle whose phrase ‘call eight’ is synonymous with the pair of ambulance-chasing lawyers delivering justice, and fair compensation to the common man.

The picture-perfect comedy, Cellino V. Barnes is pulled from the headlines, with artistic license by playwrights, Mike B. Breen and David Rafailedes.

The play will be at the Asylum Theater through January 26th.

A Familiar Story

Cellino and Barnes built a multimillion-dollar empire settling personal injury cases, with over $165 million in profits from settling cases for their clients for $1.5 billion. But it all went up in flames due to jealousy, loose ethics, and fax machine confusion (or so the play would lead us to believe), taking creative liberties to develop a compelling plot. It works, providing pure entertainment, while evoking nostalgia.

The pair shared big dreams. Forced to leave Cellino’s father’s law firm, Cellino & Likoudis (for going against more conservative practices) for taking risks, they reinvented the legal injury industry. They began by targeting clients who owed his father’s company money and taking the cases on contingency; their clients paid nothing upfront.

They positioned themselves as advocates for the common man, not Ivy-league corporate-trained lawyers. Propelled by a catchy radio jingle they seemed unstoppable until 2005, when a court suspended Cellino for six months after an investigation found that the firm was loan sharking, lending clients’ money against potential settlements.

Complete Life Cycle

The show encapsulates the birth, boom, and demise of an iconic law firm, and captures a bromance of two men connected through success.  Cellino is characterized as lazy and lucky (creating a successful media campaign). Barnes is portrayed as driven, a rule breaker (who arrived 20 minutes early to his interview to find and study the questions).  It suggests the firm’s demise was related to Barnes’ becoming power-hungry, proposing they own the ambulance, and hospital while leaving Cellino to focus on bathroom remodeling, and other big projects (including his daughter’s hockey team).

The show infuses historical context like referencing a competitor “Hurt in a car? Call William Mattar” and Cellino’s filing to to dissolve the firm, announcing the decision with an email blast to employees: “As you may know, my dad started the predecessor to Cellino & Barnes in 1958.” Mixing in fiction for example suggesting that at times Cellino unwittingly faxed rather than shredded documents adds to their dynamics. Cellino V. Barnes explores the explosive relationship of two men who should have had it all but got caught up in power which destroyed their relationship.

A Great Performance

The perfect chemistry between Cellino (Eric William Morris) and Barnes (Noah Weisberg – in the performance we saw understudy Barrett Riggins) makes the show. Their uncanny resemblance strikes home, and their high energy carries the show throughout the 80-minute performance  (performed without intermission). They transport the audience to a hole-in-the-wall office, filled with gray file cabinets, storage boxes, and push-button phones with cords. Hand gestures, and vocal inflections, aptly provide a reincarnation of the two lawyers who changed the injury law industry.

The script is clever, laugh-out-loud funny, and delivers a poignant, memorable story of the rise to fame of two attorneys who captured the hearts of America by appealing to the common man. Showing chutzpah, they approached large corporations for sizable settlements following the precedent set by the McDonald’s coffee case (Cellino has an original document taken from his father’s files). Interspersing snippets from the headlines provided Cellino V. Barnes with relatability and authenticity making the story believable.

The venue is intimate. Asylum NYC gives the show a close-knit atmosphere that amplifies the energy of the performers, and the infectious laughter of the audience. The theater sits behind a beautiful vintage bar at 123 E 24th St, New York, NY, where every seat offers a great view, and an additional spark of relatability sitting close enough to see, hear, and feel part of everything.

Cellino V. Barnes delivers a slice of history, with a smile.

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Two Sues on the Aisle bases its ratings on how many challahs (1-5) it pays to buy (rather than make) to see the play, show, film, book, or exhibit being reviewed.

Cellino V. Barnes Received 4 Challahs