Law Commons^™

When Courts Determine Fees In A System With A Loser Pays Norm: Fee Award Denials To Winning Plaintiffs And Defendants, Theodore Eisenberg, Talia Fisher, Issi Rosen-Zvi

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Under the English rule, the loser pays litigation costs whereas under the American rule, each party pays its own costs. Israel instead vests in its judges full discretion to assess fees and costs as the circumstances may require. Both the English and the American rules have been the subjects of scholarly criticism. Because little empirical information exists about how either rule functions in practice, an empirical study of judicial litigation cost award practices should be of general interest. This Article presents such a study in the context of Israel’s legal system. We report evidence that Israeli judges apply their discretion …

Attorneys’ Fees And Expenses In Class Action Settlements: 1993-2008, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

We report on a comprehensive data base of eighteen years of published opinions (1993-2008, inclusive) on settlements in class action and shareholder derivative cases in both state and federal courts. An earlier study, covering1993-2002 , revealed a remarkable relationship between attorneys’ fees and the size of class recovery: regardless of the methodology for calculating fees ostensibly employed by the courts, the overwhelmingly important determinant of the fee was simply the size of the recovery obtained by the class. The present study, which nearly doubles the number of cases in the data base, powerfully confirms that relationship. Fees display the same …

Differing Perceptions Of Attorney Fees In Bankruptcy Cases, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications