Amazing story from South Texas of six lawyers who got themselves appointed guardians ad litem to represent minors’ interests in a bus-crash case called Goodyear Dunlop Tires vs. Gamez et al. “Four of the six lawyers were appointed less than three weeks before Goodyear settled the case, and one only eight days before the settlement. Yet according to Austin lawyer Debora Alsup, who worked on the appeal, all six asked for $100,000 in fees,” payable by the tire company. They asked for $400-500 an hour, two or three times their customary fee, arguing that “those rates were customary for ad litem fees in Webb County.” As for the lawyers’ self-report of hours worked, well, suffice it to say that one of them was so bold as to bill for more than 24 hours in a single day, while another billed 48 hours for travel over a two-day period, including compensation for being asleep. And on and on, as the Houston Chronicle’s Rick Casey reports (“Lawyer bills for missing tuck-in time”, Aug. 31):

?One lawyer billed 53 separate entries of 0.1 hour each in one day for reviewing 16 filings by plaintiffs, “which were identical except in minor respects,” according to the appeals court.
?One lawyer billed between two and four hours at $500 per hour to review each of numerous one-page deposition notices, for a total of 50 hours for reviewing the notices.

District Judge Raul Vasquez of Laredo gave the lawyers a lot of what they sought, but a three-judge panel in San Antonio disagreed, calling the fees “unconscionable”. And here is the perfect grace note to the affair, as reported by Casey:

One appeals judge, Sarah Duncan, wrote a concurring opinion concluding the full court should “report these attorneys to the grievance committee.”

In Laredo the grievance committee is chaired by Marcel Notzon III, the lawyer whom Judge Vasquez awarded the most fees in this case.

Filed under: ethics, Houston