Quick Hits (3/24)

This article says that a federal court in North Dakota has struck down the judicial code of conduct barring certain campaign speeches by judges.  The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of judicial free speech in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, and many of us have been worried about the long term effects of judicial partisan electioneering on the public's faith in the judiciary.     . . .     When you search the news for references to "ethics" you get a lot of local news about what kinds of gifts, if any, local government officials can accept.  Those disputes can create a lot of disagreement, like whether the list price of a Boston Red Sox playoff ticket is less than the ticket's real value (my intuition says "yes"), and whether "gift" is the German word for poison (my intuition says "no comment").    . . .     Sometimes, "ethics" is just a brick they throw at you.  Here's a story about a lawyer who faithfully represented a town for 16 years, but nearly lost that job because someone cried "conflict."  Upon fuller reflection, everyone realized that there really wasn't a conflict after all.    . . .     Lawyers are seeing an uptick in client requests for living wills, health care proxies, and the like after the Terry Schiavo case rose to such prominence.  Perhaps that tragic scenario will result in fewer such cases in the future.    . . .     The Southern California town of South Gate is suing law firms that represented town's treasurer, Albert Robles, when he was criminally indicted.  One major law firm that reportedly settled with the city by paying $2 million arising from alleged over-billing says that one set of politicians hired the firm and were pleased with the work and then another set of politicians simply didn't want to pay.  The town had rung up $11 million in legal fees in just two years while its normal budget for annual legal fees was $700,000.

Comments

[Richard Zitrin]

I was paging through when I found John's post. I thought some might be interested in more info, even at this late date. The fee agreement was definitely the worst I've ever seen, and -- having examined over 1,000 -- I asked permission of counsel who hired me (THEY, not I, used that colorful language!) to say exactly that.

Tickets was in bad financial shape and wanted to convert its hourly to a contingency. So far so good. But the "contingency" fee wasn't really contingent at all, since Brobeck at any time could convert it into an hourly fee at between (no kiddin' here, folks) 100 and 250% of its hourly rate. The fee agreement also said that while Tickets always had the right to settle, if Brobeck did not agree with the settlement, Brobeck and Tickets would have to go before a retired NDCA federal judge to determine whether Tickets could settle (i.e., it did not really have that right, though ethically it's a right that can't be given up.) The agreement also said that Brobeck could withdraw with or without cause, should it decide to, without anything more.

The fee agreement ALSO said that Tickets could of course fire Brobeck, if it did, the 250% multiplier would kick in on the hourly fees. No fooling; this is REALLY what it said. I have a copy, which I like showing my ethics classes. It's incredible hubris killed this beast.

Postscript: Soon after Brobeck imploded and went into bankruptcy, Tickets got an adverse s.j. motion and on that same day (again, I'm not kidding) Brobeck converted the now-lost contingency to an hourly.

Richard