Redondo Beach Not Pleased With Fee Award.
As reported in our October 28, 2010 “In the News” post, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert O’Brien awarded Building a Better Redondo $313,000 in attorney’s fees for successful efforts in getting Measure G on the recent elections ballot, with the award being assessed against Redondo Beach. Recently, the City Council voted 4-0 to appeal the fee award. Measure G, a waterfront zoning and land-use measure, passed with 52.4% of the vote in last week’s election. For more on this, see Kristin S. Agostoni’s November 3, 2010 post at the dailybreeze.com.
$120 Million Fee Payment Still Allows Jury Consideration of Damages, But Eliminates Punitive Damages Risk in Tentative Settlement.
Oracle sued SAP in 2007, alleging that its subsidiary TomorrowNow illegally downloaded Oracle software/supporting materials so as to lure away Oracle customers. On the eve of a jury trial, the parties reached a tentative settlement under which SAP would pay Oracle $120 million for “past and future reasonable attorneys fees and costs,” yet allow the jury to consider damages awardable under the Copyright Act to Oracle but eliminate the consideration of any punitive damages as part of the settlement. The jury trial started the week of November 1, with the parties having very different views of the potential damages–Oracle has pegged them at north of $2 billion while SAP has maintained they should be in the tens of millions. Chris Kanaracus’ November 2, 2010 post at computerworld.com has more on this settlement and on-going trial.