There is a unique aspect of legal fee law that comes in handy whenever the lawyer has behaved especially badly, but claims he or she is still entitled to be paid a full legal fee. This is called fee forfeiture and it’s designed to discourage lawyers from violating legal and ethical rules by withholding all or part of their fees, even if the fees are reasonable.
Not many lawyers or judges know about this doctrine, though it is firmly established in most states and general fee law. In this example, the family who “won” a case, that resulted in fees and expenses to their lawyers set at $5.5 million or so later discovered that the lawyers and the judge on their case were engaged in an illegal bribery scheme — well beyond this single case. They now argue that the lawyers should be compelled to refund the fees and expenses because they did not legally win the case.
The families’ claims were settled on Oct. 17, 2009 and their attorneys pocketed $5.2 million in legal fees and $408,000 in expenses, according to the complaint.
Federal authorities had begun investigating Limas’ [the judge's] corruption even before the helicopter crash case was filed, and obtained recordings of lawyers, including Jose Solis, engaging in the bribes, according to the complaint. …
[Deceased -Plaintiff] Sanchez’s widow and children claim that the attorneys’ bribes jeopardized their case, and “dishonored the memories of Michael Sanchez and Raul Garcia.” …
Dishonoring the client is a bit vague and not a basis I’ve heard of for fee forfeiture, but criminal conduct in the course of representing the client is a big problem. Of course, the next question is whether the lawyers can pay this amount back — it’s probably not covered by insurance. And the question after that is whether the settling insurance company may have a way to reopen the settled case to take all the money back.
Original story: Here.
