Attorneys who represented the plaintiffs in the Hazleton immigration case filed court papers this afternoon seeking nearly $2.4 million in attorneys fees and costs.There's a list of some of those involved in last year's case here; I think it's safe to assume that the "legal organizations" include at least the ACLU and perhaps the PRLDEF as well.
In a 25 page brief, 37 attorneys from seven different law firms and legal organizations say they are entitled to the money to compensate them for the thousands of hours they spent interviewing plaintiffs, defendants and preparing voluminous court filings for the case.
The plaintiffs' petition "illustrates the circus the ACLU brought to this case," [mayor Lou Barletta] said. "They had 20 attorneys sitting in the courtroom at a time, 16 of them doing nothing but running up the bill."That works out to about $300 an hour if we simply divide $2.3 million by 7613, and it's even higher if not all of the amount is just for lawyer's fees. That would seem to be a bit exorbitant for lawyers working for the ACLU in Pennsylvania. Who knew being stalwart defenders of the Constitution could pay so well.
The petition lists 37 lawyers as having worked on the case, most of them from the Philadelphia firm Cozen O'Connor, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.
They billed a total of 7,613 hours.
The lawyers defended their fee request as reasonable, saying the city repeatedly amended its ordinance in an effort to put it on sounder legal footing - making more work for them.
Posted to Immigration2007b at August 31, 2007 03:04 PM
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