Profoundly depressing: “A Manhattan appeals court [last week] reinstated a $1.3 billion fee award for attorneys who helped to settle tobacco litigation in California, saying the arbitrators who awarded the fee did not exceed their authority and should not have been second-guessed by a state judge.” A year and a half ago Manhattan judge Nicholas Figueroa (Sept. 27-29, 2002) struck down as “irrational” the $1.25 billion fee award to the so-called Castano Group of lawyers, who had filed many different legal actions including one under a California private attorney general statute. As we commented at the time, the lawyers in question “didn’t actually represent California — the state’s own lawyers did that — and were in fact rivals, rather than allies, of the Scruggs-Moore team of lawyers who did manage to pull off the settlement. The Castano lawyers, however, repositioned themselves as somehow a catalyst for the national settlement and thus entitled to fees”. With an appellate panel’s quashing last August of Judge Charles Ramos’s inquiry into tobacco fees (see Aug. 10), the tobacconeers have now compiled a well-nigh perfect record of rolling over judicial opposition, with the notable exception of the Freedom Holdings v. Spitzer case in the Second Circuit (see Jan. 12). (Tom Perrotta, “$1.3 Billion Fee Upheld in California Tobacco Case”, New York Law Journal, May 19).
Update: $1.3 billion tobacco fee reinstated
Profoundly depressing: “A Manhattan appeals court [last week] reinstated a $1.3 billion fee award for attorneys who helped to settle tobacco litigation in California, saying the arbitrators who awarded the fee did not exceed their authority and should not have been second-guessed by a state judge.” A year and a half ago Manhattan judge Nicholas […]
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