Opinion ID: 1196201
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: The Fee-Quantum Inquiry

Text: ¶ 14 Unless a waiver-resisting claimant will after receiving a trial judge's on-the-record warning that at the next stage of the tribunal's proceedings the claimant's own lawyer (rather than the respondent-employer) will be confronting him/her as an adversary request, upon good cause shown, a deferred post-settlement hearing on the issue, the trial tribunal is duty-bound to proceed at once to hear and decide the ancillary dispute over the amount to be awarded the lawyer. No fee-quantum controversy (between the claimant and his lawyer) should ever be allowed to cloud, delay, impair or interfere with a pending § 84 settlement's completion. Nothing less is both parties' due when the claimant should confront a potential challenge from his own lawyera professional advocate ordinarily expected to identify with the client's cause until the very end of litigation process. [32] ¶ 15 Because there is in this cause absolutely no paper trail of this claimant's on-the-record [33] or off-the-record [34] waiver of a fee-dispute inquiry, his plea in the March 6 letter and in the instant proceeding for reviewthat he is entitled to an adversarial hearingindicates neither a retraction of, nor a retreat from, an earlier-assumed contrary position. In sum, this record is silent on claimant's earlier waiver. [35] Waiver is a sine qua non of the trial tribunal's power to determine, sans separate hearing, the fee to be deducted from the award. The transcript does not disclose that the claimant had ever been informed of his rights and knowingly relinquished them. [36] His critical waiver may not be found from a silent record. [37]