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Navigating Beyond The Lodestar: Borrowing The Federal Sentencing Guidelines To Provide Fee-Shifting Predictability, Matthew Ahn
Navigating Beyond The Lodestar: Borrowing The Federal Sentencing Guidelines To Provide Fee-Shifting Predictability, Matthew Ahn
Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)
The lodestar has been the dominant calculation method for fee-shifting awards for nearly 40 years. But the lodestar has numerous persistent issues: it leads to extra litigation and judicial effort, it results in highly variable fee awards, and it incentivizes plaintiffs’ attorneys to bill extravagantly and reject settlement. This Article argues that these issues with the lodestar, along with many others, result from a mismatch between the lodestar and the purpose of the underlying fee-shifting statutes, which is to encourage attorneys to bring suits that would not normally be economically viable. Encouraging attorneys to do so requires the fee awards …
Defining “Different”–How Distinctive Methods Of Textual Interpretation Led To The Abduction Enhancement Circuit Split, Adam Manaa
Pepperdine Law Review
This note examines the federal circuit courts’ differing approaches to interpreting the robbery abduction enhancement in the United States Sentencing Guidelines. Specifically, this note sets forth how the Sixth Circuit’s strict method of textual interpretation in United States v. Hill led to the erroneous holding that the term “different location” refers to “a place different from the store that is being robbed.” This note argues the court should have taken a more holistic interpretative approach, taking the underlying purpose of the Guidelines into account.