The Blogosphere Continues to Greet California Attorney’s Fees . . . We continue to be delighted by the gracious reception of California Attorney’s Fees coming from authors of legal blogs. Most recently, Greg May, author of The Blog of Appeal, and H. Scott Leviant, author of The Complex Litigator, have greeted us […]
Second District Finds that Plaintiff Individually Settling for $10,500—Even Though His Claim Was Only For $44.63—Entitled to Garner a $500 Fee Award. There are many sections of the California Labor Code that have mandatory fee award authority. As examples, Labor Code section 1194(a) provides that employees paid less than their legal overtime
Settlement Follows on the Heels of a Preliminary Injunction and Denial of Defendants’ Summary Judgment Motions. In Fall 2006, several homeless persons, individually and on a behalf of a class of all homeless people living in the City of Fresno whose personal belongings were unlawfully taken and destroyed in sweeps, raids,
We Survey the Decisions; They Leave Plenty Room for Advocacy On Each Side of the Debate. One of the most frequent challenges to fee petitions is reasonableness—the fees being sought were too large, involved attorneys assessing unduly high hourly rates, or were riddled by excessive and duplicative charges. Although we believe it
They May Be Old, But Not Necessarily Archaic. “O! then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you …. “She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes … “O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees.” –SHAKESPEARE, Romeo and Juliet, Act I, scene 4. “While in bed the sick man’s lying, “While in Court your
Use of Lodestar Goes Back to 1973 Third Circuit Opinion, With Recent Second Circuit Opinion Actually Abandoning Its Use In Some Contexts. “Lodestar” is a much used term in fee proceedings, referring to the product of the attorney’s usual hourly rate and the number of hours expended on behalf of a client.
Mike Hensley and Marc Alexander thank Bruce Nye and Cal Biz Lit for welcoming California Attorney’s Fees to the Blogosphere! It’s nice to be noticed . . . Bruce Nye, who is up in San Francisco, has a neat legal blog. But we especially liked his off-topic heat wave youtube link of May 16, 2008,
An Invitation to Our Readers . . . In “John Wilkins’ Analytical Language,”[1] Jorge Luis Borges describes a fantastical bestiary: These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia called the Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. In its distant pages it is written that animals are divided
Fourth District, Division 3 So Holds In Real Estate Nondisclosure Case. As in life, we sometimes see appellate decisions come out in cycles that teach or reinforce very important points. Appealability is an issue highlighted in our June 6, 2008 post (discussing the unpublished Johnson decision from the Second District) and in
Fourth District, Division Two Clarifies in a 2002 Decision That An Appeal From a Judgment on the Merits and on Fee Entitlement, Even Though Amount Is Determined Later, Is Timely In Nature. Yesterday, in our June 6, 2008 post, we discussed an unpublished Second District decision—Johnson v. Greenberg, Case No. B197894 (2d
