Quote:
Originally Posted by Eyedea
I love reading cases where judges smack down lawyers for juicing bills.
I was reading one case about offer of judgment calculation and Attorney A billed like 10% of total bill and Attorney B billed 90% and the judge was like "I'm sure B thinks very highly of himself, but since A did all of the work at trial, was the only one that actually showed up for hearings, and filed all of the work, B is kidding himself if he thinks I'm giving him that much money"
Best story I've heard locally was in an arbitration involving a commercial lease where damages were less than $30,000. Not sure on the exact details, but the plaintiff landlord was represented by one of the big firms in town and prevailed, but was only awarded damages of $7,000 or so. Defendant had offered $10,000 to settle before arbitration. Plaintiff filed an attorney fee petition for
$120,000 dollars, accompanied by a letter stating that the plaintiff knew it was a pretty big fee and that they "would be willing to voluntarily reduce it by 15%."
A friend of mine does contract work for the defendant's attorney and saw the petition, and almost all of the hours were billed by a brand spanking new attorney at her full, exorbitant rate. As of last week defendant was preparing his response; I'll have to follow up on that.
Edit: A google search of "excessive" and "fee petition" leads to some awesome cases with quotes like this:
"The plaintiff's attorneys' second supplemental fee petition is so unreasonable and exorbitant that it shocks the conscience of this court as it did the conscience of the district judge. The record indicates that as many as six lawyers from three different firms billed significant amounts of time in preparing for the short hearing on a simple issue. The time spent ranged from four hours spent by one attorney in proofreading another attorney's work to 138.5 hours expended during approximately a one month period by another attorney. The idea that one associate from Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy billed a month's time on this simple motion is frankly unbelievable. It defies reason that a partner of such firm, would spend eleven hours at $245 per hour on the simple matter of the district court's review of a previous bill assessment. If these attorneys did in fact spend the hours they now claim, such time was unreasonable and not justified by the one simple issue presented."
Another good one is one where the prevailing party submitted a fee petition of $530,000 and appealed when it was only granted $20,000. The court of appeals did in fact reverse and remand, albeit with an order to enter judgment denying the fee petition in its entirety.
Last edited by Hey_Porter; 04-23-2009 at 02:50 PM.