Prologue
A story from a long-ago summer day highlights the big rewards that you can earn from taking purposeful risks.
In a little over a month, on August 5, 2015, 151 years will have passed since a commander took a gamble during the Battle of Mobile Bay.
The commander knew that the defenders had rigged
Blawgletter's firm handles lots of patent infringement cases on a contingent-fee or hybrid basis. And by hybrid we mean either a fraction of hourly plus a contingent percentage, a flat-fee plus a kicker, or an hourly or flat fee with some case-specific incentive to get exceptional results.
Now we see a scholar who has looked
Blawgletter doesn't often give high marks to newspaper editors on the quality of the facts they offer in support of their opinions. The lead editorial in today's issue of The Dallas Morning News — on "patent trolls" — should thus not have come as a surprise.
Yet it stuns.
Start with the title. "Patent trolls get rich by
You may recall Blawgletter's thoughts on "How to Negotiate a Reverse Contingent Fee". We said:
The [reverse contingent fee] agreement with the client calculates the RCF as a percentage of the savings off of a benchmark number. The benchmark reflects an estimate of the client's possible exposure.
By way of example, if the law
The Seventh Circuit held last week that "gross amount recovered" in a contingent fee contract didn't include money the client got before hiring the lawyer. In re Solis, No. 09-4075 (7th Cir. July 6, 2010) (applying Illinois law).
The ruling turned on the principle that "Illinois construes attorney contingent fee agreements strictly in
A few weeks ago, Blawgletter read an article about the down-side of making a contingent fee deal with a lawyer.
The item said that the arrangement creates a conflict of interest. The lawyer, it said, wants to settle fast because he or she may earn a big fee for doing little work while the client
A lawyer who takes a case on an hourly basis expects to collect her lodestar — hours times hourly rate — no matter the outcome.
The same lawyer, when she works on contingent fee basis, plans to earn more than her lodestar if she wins. The bonus rewards her for sharing the client's risk.
So
Blawgletter laments that most cases involving the worst instances of fraud suffer from a sad but inexorable fact: the victims' money has vanished.
Just ask the people who trusted their savings to Bernie Madoff, for instance.
Judges (and, occasionally, juries) struggle with competing urges in such cases. On the one hand, they want to find a way to right the wrong.
Blawgletter often handles business cases on a contingent fee basis. We earn a percentage of the client's recovery. No recovery, no fee.
But guess what? The client may owe tax on the recovery. Which could of course affect the client's net. And the Internal Revenue Service may regard the entire recovery — including the contingent
The Seventh Circuit today upheld a forum non conveniens ruling. The order under review sent a Bulgarian company's case against a Bulgarian bank and its American parent to Bulgaria. Anecdotes about corruption in the Balkan state's courts didn't impress the panel, nor did Bulgaria's hefty filing fee, among other things that Their Honors found not enough to keep