Jury Gives Lawyer Extra $1.6 M Slice of $103 M Legal-Fees Pie
A Minneapolis attorney has won $1.6 million from his former law firm, in a Hennepin County jury verdict over the division of $103 million in legal fees in a federal securities class action concerning AOL Time Warner.
But the money, which is coming to former partner Brian Williams in addition to the $4.5 million he already got from Heins Mills & Olson for his work in the case, is apparently less than he had hoped for, reports the Star Tribune. It says the jury rendered the $1.6 verdict for Williams on a misrepresentation by omission theory, but declined to find that the law firm committed fraud in its division of the attorney fees.
“Lawyers for Heins Mills issued a statement indicating that they might appeal and said the jury award was considerably less than Williams had sought,” the newspaper writes.
As discussed in an earlier ABAJournal.com post, partners Samuel Heins and his wife, Stacey Mills, got $48 million and $32 million, respectively, from the $103 million fee award. They said their far fatter paychecks reflected costs they had to reimburse to the firm.
