Edition Discusses Feldman, Shopoff, and Stroud.
Two articles in the January 2009 edition of the Orange County Lawyer discuss fee issues of interest in the area of family law and ethics.
In “Executive Divorce,” authored by attorney Lisa Hughes, there is a discussion of Marriage of Feldman, 153 Cal.App.4th 1470 (2007). There, the court awarded $250,000 in sanctions and $140,000 in attorney’s fees before trial when a husband failed to provide wife with full information necessary for her to properly identify, characterize, and value assets.
In “2008 Ethics Round-Up,” authored by OCBA’s Professionalism and Ethics Committee, the article discusses two cases:
- Shopoff & Cavallo LLP v. Hyon, 167 Cal.App.4th 1489 (2008) [reviewed in our November 1, 2008 post]—although declining to decide whether professional ethic prohibitions on attorney’s liens applied in contingency fee situations, the appellate court decided that any attorney’s lien violations did not invalidate the underlying contingency fee agreement itself.
- Stroud v. Tunzi, 160 Cal.App.4th 377 (2008) [reviewed in our January 6, 2009 post on Ellen Peck’s recent article in the California Bar Journal]—modified contingency fee agreements must comply, yet again, with California Business and Professions Code 6147 prerequisites; modifications were invalid because they were not signed by the lawyer, did not state the contingency rate, did not address costs, and did not state that fees were negotiable and were not established by law. The appellate court held the lawyer could not recover based on unjust enrichment given that the original fee agreement was still valid.