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Fee-Shifting Statutes And Compensation For Risk, Maureen S. Carroll
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 …
Cost And Fee Allocation In Civil Procedure, James Maxeiner
Cost And Fee Allocation In Civil Procedure, James Maxeiner
All Faculty Scholarship
Court costs in American civil procedure are allocated to the loser ("loser pays") as elsewhere in the civilized world. As Theodor Sedgwick, America's first expert on damages opined, it is matter of inherent justice that the party found in the wrong should indemnify the party in the right for the expenses of litigation. Yet attorneys' fees are not allocated this way in the United States: they are allowed to fall on the party that incurs them (the ''American rule," better, the American practice). According to Albert Ehrenzweig, Austrian judge, emigre and then prominent American law professor, the American practice is …