The VLW Blog

A Fairfax Circuit judge has ordered a Northern Virginia lawyer and his client to pay the attorneys’ fees and costs of two defendants they sued in a residential real estate tangle. Total price tag: About $272,000.
Judge Jonathan C. Thacher called the litigation “vindictive” and chided the lawyer and client for taking a claim to trial [...]

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Attorney’s fees are the cherry on the sundae for an IP lawyer who wins a trademark case. It takes an “exceptional” case for a fee award under 15 U.S.C. § 1117(a).
The 4th Circuit has decided a pair of such “exceptional” cases in recent weeks, upholding a handsome fee award each time.
Super Duper Inc. sued Mattel, [...]

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In our week’s worth of trend-spotting, we noted on Tuesday that law firm cutbacks and the recessionary climate may have scrambled firm workloads, with unexpected consequences for lawyers who try to get fee awards approved in court.
Bingo. Last month, an Alexandria U.S. District Court knocked down a lawyer’s fee award under the Lanham Act because [...]

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The 4th Circuit is no fan of the Laffey matrix, a scale used to award attorney’s fees in the metropolitan Washington D.C. area.
But the court said in a new federal workers’ comp case that the matrix could be a starting point for awarding fees to a D.C. lawyer who won LHWCA benefits for nuclear [...]

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Richmond attorney Tony Troy claims a circuit judge erred when he slashed Troy’s attorney fee request in an action related to the Gloucester County government battles.  Troy is asking the Supreme Court of Virginia to review the decision to award him only a third of his claimed fees and costs in a Freedom of Information [...]

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A credit reporting service has escaped the Matrix for payment of attorney’s fees for violating federal fair credit reporting statutes.
The popular “Laffey Matrix” schedule is used in the Washington, D.C., area to award attorney’s fees. For the second time in a year, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has told NoVa lawyers they need [...]

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Lawyers always like to know what judges think about fee requests.
A new case from Norfolk Circuit Court shows that a judge won’t necessarily discount a fee for the winning lawyer in a “Lemon Law” case just because the sum seems disproportionate to the amount awarded by the jury.
Bruce and Michele Nedelka had trouble getting a [...]

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Citizens hit with an $80,000 attorneys’ fee award after petitioning for removal of local elected officials are asking the ACLU to handle their appeal. The Daily Press reports some legal scholars think the citizens have a good case.

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Lawyers for four Gloucester County supervisors “disregarded good billing judgment and went straight for the stars,” according to a motion filed Tuesday by substitute Commonwealth’s Attorney John “Jack” T. Randall.
Randall issued the motion in response to the attempt by the supervisors to collect $119,776.53 in attorney fees from the Gloucester County Citizens for Accountable Representation. [...]

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Employers got some good news Dec. 3 when the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals released two Sarbanes-Oxley decisions that favored the businesses.
In the first case, Platone v. U.S. Dep’t of Labor, former airline official Stacy Platone appealed the Department of Labor’s reversal of her whistleblower award, one of the few whistleblower wins since SOX [...]

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