Simons Garner $122,000 Fee Award After Winning Employment Litigation Brought By Nanny and Chauffer.
As reported by an AP release of December 28, 2011 in The Sacramento Bee, nanny Claudia Leite and chauffer Robert Young (formers, we would surmise) lost their employment discrimination/wage-hour suit against Indiana Pacers owner Herb Simon and his wife. That is not all. They were recently ordered to pay $122,000 in attorney’s fees to the Mr. Simon and his wife, because the judge did not believe much of their testimony. Attorneys for Mr. Simon have said the couple spent $1.4 million defending against the case.
$300 Million Fee Award in Southern Copper Derivative Suit Was About 15% Of Total Judgment.
On December 24, 2011, we reported on a Delaware Chancery Court’s $300 million award of attorney’s fees to Southern Copper shareholders’ attorneys, likely to be the third largest fee award after the Enron and Tyco fee awards. However, a December 28, 2011 article by Joe Palazzolo in The Wall Street Journal does give some perspective to the award: it was about 15% of the total judgment entered against Grupo Mexico (a judgment which is now up to $2 billion once interest is included). Many federal courts utilize a 25% percentage-of-recovery benchmark in federal securities cases for determining the reasonableness of a fee award, although we did a post on September 21, 2011 reporting that fee awards in derivative shareholder cases have been scrutinized more closely and scaled back in some instances.