Gulf Oil Spill Class Action Request Stirs Up Some Emotions on Both Sides.
As reported by John Schwartz in a December 3, 2011 article in The New York Times, attorney members of the Deepwater Horizon (Gulf) oil spill class action multidistrict litigation against BP have requested a New Orleans federal district judge to create a fund to cover litigation costs, specifically requesting 6% of all judgments and settlement received after November 7, 2011, including those for people who have dropped out of the lawsuits and negotiated their own recoveries from the $20 billion Gulf Coast Claims Facility administered by Kenneth R. Feinberg. The request does not apply to damages already paid out of the Feinerg fund (more than $5.7 billion). However, the request has drawn outrage from outside attorneys, who argue that it is a “fee grab” by lawyers who have done nothing for numerous claimants and are claiming fees in a fund that is subject to “no fault” allocations. The other side argues that they spent a lot of time establishing the fund and putting pressure on BP to settle rather than litigate.
Winning Prisoner Civil Rights’ Attorney Gets a Whopping $1.40 As Fee Award.
Who says that all civil rights attorneys get rich? Well, not all by any means, as reported by a recent Wall Street Journal article.
Attorney Harrison Williams requested nearly $100,000 in fees ($75,000 lodestar plus an apparent multiplier) after winning a civil rights lawsuit for a prisoner claiming that his Rastafarian religious rights were violated when his dreadlocks were touched and “slightly” toren by guards. The prisoner was awarded $1 after trial. Attorney was awarded $1.50 (but actually $1.40 because 10% of the dollar paid to his client was required to come from the fees).
The Second Circuit determined that the small fee award was correct. Although admitting that the Prison Litigation Reform Act (1997) was not a model of clarity, the federal appeals court decided that Congress limited attorney’s fees to 150% of a jury award–whether meritorious (winning prisoner) or frivolous (losing prisoner, with bad faith being shown in addition to a loss).
Plaintiff attorneys have opined that this decision is the death knell of civil rights representation in the prisoner area. The appeals court did agree that the small award was the “practical equivalent of no fee award at all,” but ruled that the statutory language was clear and “permits no exception for minimal or nominal monetary judgments”–citing numerous decisions to support its conclusion.
For you purists out there, the decision is Shepherd v. Goord, Docket No. 10-4821-pr (2d Cir. Nov. 15, 2011) and the fee entitlement provision is 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d)(2).