The lawyer who asked a federal judge to pay his legal team $4.4 million this week for representing two brothers in a civil rights case settled this month wants $132,000 more for past and potential legal work on the related Rosenthal contempt case.
Lloyd Kelley filed the request Wednesday asking U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt to approve $31,625 for work performed by him, another lawyer and legal assistants on the dimension of the lawsuit that led to Rosenthal’s resignation.
Wednesday’s request also notes that county commissioners approved $227,000 to cover legal fees for the defense of Rosenthal and others.
And compared to that, this is a mere trifle. Well, there’s still the other fee request the story mentioned, but that’s totally separate. Any lawyers out there want to comment on the reasonableness of these numbers? Thanks.
I am not a lawyer. The way I read one of the first articles made it seem like Lloyd Kelly’s fees etc were 2.2 million and then he is asking for them to be doubled due to the ‘risk’ of the case etc. If 2.2 million were his costs of labor, overhead, then I think he should get a fixed profit % if its not worked into his billings of 2.2M. I don’t think its reasonable to try to recoup your money and try to get 100% profit as well.
When I work for the government I get my labor + overhead + 10% profit and they audit the books and make me pay back money if they feel I made too much.
Let him recoup his actual expenditures and get 10%-20% profit over his expenses and call it done.
I got curious so I downloaded Kelley’s original fee application and have stored it here if you want to read it (pdf):
http://antinomy.typepad.com/Ibarrafee.pdf
It seems to me he is double dipping a little in claiming that risk justifies both his rate and the multiplier.
I don’t know. How much do you think getting rid of Chuck Rosenthal was worth? Something I hope Kenneth Hoyt will consider but of course never tell anyone he did.