Attorney Fees
3rd Circuit OKs $567M Legal Bill for Work By 72 Firms on Fen-Phen Case
Posted Oct 9, 2009 11:50 AM CST
By Martha Neil
A $567 million fee awarded by a federal district judge for 350,000 hours of legal work logged by 72 law firms in Fen-Phen diet drug litigation has been approved by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Rejecting arguments over the cost to plaintiffs who opted out of the complex diet-drug litigation and the process by which the chief judge of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania determined the legal bill, a three-judge appellate panel found it to be reasonable under the circumstances, reports the Legal Intelligencer in an article reprinted in New York Lawyer (reg. req.).
"The amount of the award, though extraordinarily large, is not excessive in this extraordinary case," writes U.S. Circuit Judge Kent Jordan in the majority opinion.
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Comments
associate
Oct 9, 2009 12:05 PM CST
1620/hr average according to those numbers.
Still, with the risk of zero, I suppose it’s not outrageous, but it’s definitely a lot.
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Sam
Oct 9, 2009 12:26 PM CST
$1,620 an hour for litigation is nothing but greed and corruption. it makes you wonder if judges get kickbacks when they approve such settlements.
This is why the legal field gets bad eye.
Cases like this show an immediate need for tort reform and the need to take the fees out of the court’s discretion.
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associate
Oct 9, 2009 3:30 PM CST
Sam, would you be decrying the unconscionable injustice if the attorneys had lost the case and gotten zero dollars?
Would part of your tort reform include minimum attorneys fees for the losing side? What about minimums for the winning side? We already have maximums for the winning side (1/3) and losing side (zero).
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fed up
Oct 13, 2009 10:17 AM CST
to #3, the answer is alternative dispute resolution, not the current lawsuit model.
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