- Shop worker prevails in U.K.: no need to pay music royalty fees for singing while stacking shelves [BBC]
- Word arrives that Eric Turkewitz has been named a New York Super Lawyer, but he manages to control his enthusiasm [New York Personal Injury]
- In which a columnist criticizes a post-election Tweet of mine, labels me “socially liberal libertarian” [Carney, DC Examiner; Roger Simon, "The Strange Case of NY-23"]
- Plaintiff’s lawyers may bag $28 million in Wal-Mart wage/hour class actions [ABA Journal]
- Contestant’s million-dollar suit against California pageant ends abruptly after surfacing of too-racy-to-post video [TMZ; irony-fraught background at Brayton and Good As You]
- News bulletin: lawyers shouldn’t trade on inside information [Cunningham, Concur Op]
- Possession, not just wrongful use: “L.A. Halloween Silly String Ban” [Volokh]
- Video of man who runs giant soda pop store in L.A., includes his thoughts on recycling law and the way regulation often works to big businesses’ advantage against small [Boing Boing]
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
RIAA and file sharing,
small business,
United Kingdom,
wage and hour suits,
Wal-Mart
- Details emerge on new demonstration grants for patient safety and medical liability [Point of Law, NLJ] GOP underwhelmed by Obama gestures [Fox News and earlier, Salt Lake Tribune, Washington Times, Examiner and more]
- Trial lawyer charity effort donates Wii sets to rehab hospitals [Daily Business News Detroit] Wait a minute – what about those lawsuits contending Wii was a defective product?
- No, John Edwards didn’t invent trial tactic of “channeling” thoughts of deceased. And is inflaming jury passion and prejudice “what good closing argument for a good trial lawyer is about”? [ABAJournal, Hochfelder/PoL, earlier]
- “It took Arizona state police months to realize the same driver was involved” in monkey-mask speed-cam evasions [MargRev, LtB]
- Connecticut lawyer’s complaints allege that business structure of Total Attorney service amounts to improper fee division [LegalBlogWatch]
- “Want to Complain About a Cop? Better Bring Your I.D. — And Maybe A Toothbrush” [Ken at Popehat]
- Tenth Circuit, McConnell writing, reinstates SCO suit against Novell over Linux [WSJ Law Blog]
- New York employment law could bite Human Rights Watch in memorabilia controversy [Volokh]
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
patent litigation,
red light cameras,
workplace
“School board members in Mount Vernon agreed Wednesday night to resolve a federal lawsuit by paying $5,500 to the boy and his family and $115,500 to their lawyers.” [AP/NBC4i] We covered the case, in which a teacher is alleged to have branded a cross onto a pupil’s arm, in July; the teacher, John Freshwater, has himself filed a civil rights action against the school district charging religious discrimination, and a suit by the parents against Freshwater remains ongoing.
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
Ohio,
schools
Class action impresario Bill Lerach’s old Lerach Coughlin firm, now renamed Coughlin Stoia, continues to prosper mightily despite the imprisonment of its former principal, but federal judge James Rosenbaum in Minnesota has now knocked $45 million off a $110 million fee request in a settlement of a class action against UnitedHealth, saying the firm would probably not have been selected as lead counsel had Lerach “timely and fully” disclosed to the court his status as a target of federal investigation. The lead plaintiff in the case was CALPERS, the California public employee pension fund that has long enjoyed cozy relations with politicians, unions and prominent class-actioneers. [Dan Levine, The Recorder/Law.com]
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
Bill Lerach,
California,
class actions,
Coughlin Stoia
A St. Louis lawyer has won big in contingency-fee tax collection by teaming up with class action firm Korein Tillery to challenge cellphone companies’ claims not to be subject to municipal taxes on landline telephone providers. At the same time he’s been town attorney for the suburban community of University City, which now finds itself in the position (with many other Missouri municipalities) of paying its share of $65 million in proposed fees. [Paul Hampel and Margaret Gillerman, "U.City lawyer wins big in class-action case", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jul. 23]
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
Missouri,
taxes
A belated update: Earlier this year (Feb. 5, Feb. 10) we brought word of a Los Angeles case in which a judge ruled that a class action lawyer who had obtained gift cards but not cash for the client class (in a suit against Windsor Fashions) should himself be paid his fee in gift cards. Turns out that didn’t last long: Per the L.A. Times, “Another judge overturned the order in February and awarded Yorba Linda lawyer Neil B. Fineman $125,000 in fees instead of gift cards.”
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
class action settlements
The Washington Times reported on Friday on what it says is a little-noticed provision in draft cap-and-trade legislation (PDF) authored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.): new authorization for “citizen suits” to challenge government inaction on climate change. The bill would confer such standing, according to the article, on anyone “who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part,” to such inaction. However — in an apparent concession made some time ago to Republican lawmakers — the article also says that total payouts by the government would be limited to the comparatively minor amount of $1.5 million per year. Attorneys’ fees payable to prevailing plaintiffs, however, will presumably be subject to no such limit. More: Carter Wood also discovers new litigation powers for state AGs tucked into the bill; Marlo Lewis, CEI “Open Market”; Deputy Headmistress.
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
climate change,
Henry Waxman
The Recorder: “A federal judge turned down a request for more than $2 million in fees and sanctioned a San Francisco plaintiffs lawyer $25,000 for submitting false fee applications in civil rights litigation against FedEx.” Judge Susan Illston wrote that Waukeen McCoy’s “acts of misconduct with regard to the fee petitions are among the most egregious that this court has seen in almost 14 years on the bench.” More: California Civil Justice. Earlier: Nov. 14, 2007 (McCoy’s firm “billed [opponent] Federal Express for 23.5 hours of one of its attorneys’ time over a single day”), and, on the same lawyer, July 10, 2000.
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
San Francisco,
sanctions
- Probate court in Connecticut: bad enough when they hold you improperly in conservatorship, but worse when they bill you for the favor [Hartford Courant]
- Does “Patent Troll” in World of Warcraft count as a character type or a monster type? [Broken Toys]
- 102-year-old Italian woman wins decade-long legal dispute, but is told appeal could take 10 years more [Telegraph]
- “This Cartoon Could Be Illegal, If Two Iowa Legislators Have Their Way” [Eugene Volokh]
- David Giacalone, nonpareil commentator on attorneys’ fee ethics (and haiku), has decided to end his blog f/k/a. He signs off with a four-part series on lawyer billing and fairness to consumers/clients: parts one, two, three, four, plus a final “Understanding and Reducing Attorney Fees“. He’s keeping the site as archives, though, and let’s hope that as such it goes on shedding its light for as long as there are lawyers and vulnerable clients. More: Scott Greenfield.
- Even they can’t manage to comply? Politically active union SEIU faces unfair labor practice charges from its own employees [WaPo]
- Judge in Austin awards $3 million from couple’s estate to their divorce lawyers [Austin American-Statesman]
- “Keywords With Highest Cost Per Click”, lawyers and financial services dominate [SpyFu]
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
chasing clients,
Connecticut,
divorce,
do as we say,
ethics,
free speech,
Iowa,
Italy,
on other blogs,
patent trolls,
Texas,
wills and trusts
A week ago we quoted reader Phil Grossman’s comment on this subject, provoking a discussion among readers. Now Grossman writes in with a followup:
Here’s the story on bar associations forbidding “discounting of contingency fees for clients coming to lawyers directly so that those lawyers do not have to pay referral fees”.
I had told you that I had seen reports out on the Internet saying that. But it now appears that what those reports were reporting on was that bar associations do not allow lawyers to raise their contingency fees to make up for paying referral fees in those cases where they are paying referral fees. And that really amounts to the same thing as not allowing lawyers to discount fees in cases where they are not paying referral fees. Because if they were allowed to give discounts to clients where they didn’t have to pay referral fees, they would be charging clients who come to them with a referral fee to be paid, more than clients who come to them without referral fees to be paid.
[click to continue…]
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
contingent fee
“The men who became two of the highest-paid solicitors in Britain by mishandling the claims of almost 100,000 sick miners will be struck off [= disbarred] after being found guilty of misconduct yesterday. James Beresford and Douglas Smith, partners in the South Yorkshire firm Beresfords, took advantage of vulnerable miners by putting their own commercial goals before those of their clients, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found. The company earned more than £115m under a government scheme for compensating miners with health claims, and Beresford himself made more than £16m in one year.” Among allegations the tribunal accepted as valid were acting in a conflict of interest and structuring fee arrangements in a way not in the clients’ best interest. (Afua Hirsch, Guardian, Dec. 12; Point of Law, Nov. 28).
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
United Kingdom,
workplace
…and the judge hearing an attorneys’-fee petition in the TJX credit-card data-breach case reasoned that the lawyers didn’t really deserve $6.5 million in fees for achieving that result. The lawyers proposed, but the judge was unimpressed with, a theory that their suit had “made available” $200 million to the class, even if few class members stopped by to pick it up. Such sticklers, these judges can be. (Beck and Herrmann, Nov. 11). Related: Dec. 4, 2007.
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
class action settlements,
privacy
David Giacalone figures that at least the jaw-dropper fee cases serve one useful purpose: they remind judges, the public and the legal profession itself “that we really do have a ban on unreasonable fees and expense charges — we [lawyers] can’t agree on them, charge them, or collect them”. With discussion of the Coughlin Stoia/Coke, Lawrence v. Miller, and certain lawyers’ willingness to bill two clients full freight for the same hour on the clock. (f/k/a, Nov. 21).
Tagged as:
attorneys' fees,
Coughlin Stoia
