August 31, 2007

Donate to the ACLU! (BTW: plaintiff attys want $2.4 million from Hazleton)

Thinking about donating to the ACLU?

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.

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.

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.

The city will probably appeal the amount, but even if it's reduced this will serve as a disincentive to those other cities who might consider adopting similar ordinances. And, that will enable even more illegal immigration. Wouldn't those lawyers feel better about themselves if they worked for law firms that ran daytime TV ads for those who "slip and fall"?

UPDATE: This says it's more than $2.3 million, plus $45,000 in costs:

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."

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.

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.

Posted to Immigration2007b at August 31, 2007 03:04 PM