Law Commons^™

Fee-Shifting Statutes And Compensation For Risk, Maureen S. Carroll

Articles

A law firm that enters into a contingency arrangement provides the client with more than just its attorneys' labor. It also provides a form of financing, because the firm will be paid (if at all) only after the litigation ends; and insurance, because if the litigation results in a low recovery (or no recovery at all), the firm will absorb the direct and indirect costs of the litigation. Courts and markets routinely pay for these types of risk-bearing services through a range of mechanisms, including state fee shifting statutes, contingent percentage fees, common-fund awards, alternative fee arrangements, and third-party litigation …

The New Governance And The Challenge Of Litigation Bylaws, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

Corporate governance mechanisms designed to ensure that managers act in shareholders’ interest have evolved dramatically over the past forty years. “Old governance” mechanisms such as independent directors and performance-based executive compensation have been supplemented by innovations that give shareholders greater input into both the selection of directors and ongoing operational decisions. Issuer boards have responded with tools to limit the exercise of shareholder power both procedurally and substantively. This article terms the adoption and use of these tools, which generally take the form of structural provisions in the corporate charter or bylaws, the “new governance.”

Delaware law has largely taken …

Requiem For Section 1983, Paul D. Reingold

Articles

Section 1983 no longer serves as a remedial statute for the people most in need of its protection. Those who have suffered a violation of their civil rights at the hands of state authorities, but who cannot afford a lawyer because they have only modest damages or seek only equitable remedies, are foreclosed from relief because lawyers shun their cases. Today civil rights plaintiffs are treated the same as ordinary tort plaintiffs by the private bar: without high damages, civil rights plaintiffs are denied access to the courts because no one will represent them. Congress understood that civil rights laws …

Shifting Winds: Court Whittles Away At Plaintiffs' Recovery Of Attorney Fees, Carl W. Tobias, Margaret L. Sanner

Law Faculty Publications

A Supreme Court ruling in a case brought by an assisted-living home doesn't offer much assistance to civil rights lawyers. The ruling in Buckhannon Board & Care Home v. West Virginia will frustrate plaintiffs' efforts to recover attorney fees in litigation to vindicate important societal values such as the prevention of discrimination. But it shouldn't come as a big surprise. Buckhannon is only the most recent of numerous High Court decisions since the 1980s that can complicate attempts by plaintiffs lawyers to secure attorney's fees.

Legislative Development, The Attorney Accountability Act: A Case Study Of The Complexities Of Incentive-Based Legal Reform, Jamie S. Henikoff, Scott R. Peppet

Publications

No abstract provided.

Sanctions, Symmetry, And Safe Harbors: Limiting Misapplication Of Rule 11 By Harmonizing It With Pre-Verdict Dismissal Devices, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

With only a small risk of overstatement, one could say that sanctions in civil litigation exploded during the 1980s, with the 1983 amendment to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 acting as the principal catalyst. From 1938 until the 1983 amendment, only two dozen or so cases on Rule 11 were reported, with courts rarely imposing sanctions. Although a few cases were notable by virtue of sanction size, prestige of the firm sanctioned, or publicity attending the underlying case, the legal profession largely regarded Rule 11 as a dead letter. In addition, other sanctions provisions, such as Federal Rule of …

A Policy Analysis Of Fee-Shifting Rules Under The Internal Revenue Code, Gary Myers, Richard L. Schmalbeck

Faculty Publications

Until recently, the costs of litigating federal tax cases were borne exclusively by the parties who incurred them, regardless of whether the government or the taxpayer prevailed in the litigation. This practice reflects the application to tax disputes of the ‘American rule’ against fee shifting. Although the American rule continues to be predominant in the tax area, it has been modified in important respects. An explicit fee-reimbursement rule, benefiting prevailing taxpayers in cases in which the government is found to have acted unreasonably, was added to the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) by the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of …