Court Opinion

ID: 9788640
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:13:40.007636+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:15.364286
License: Public Domain

ORME, Judge
(concurring in part and concurring in the result in part):
1 20 I concur in the court's opinion, except that I concur only in the result reached in Section I(C). I believe the discussion there sweeps too broadly.
121 While not emphasized in the lead opinion, this case does not involve the familiar situation where a reasonable attorney fee is recoverable by the express terms of a statute or contract. On the contrary, the trial court awarded attorney fees without any basis in contract or statute, having determined that Defendants breached their fidu-clary duties. In that unique posture, I have no problem with the trial court determining, in the exercise of its broad equitable powers and with case law support, that appropriate relief for Plaintiff would include an additional award of the amount its attorneys would otherwise be due under their contingent fee arrangement so that Plaintiff would be made completely whole. I see no abuse of the trial court's discretion in providing this relief to Plaintiff under the facts of this case.
22 That said, I see no need to comment more generally on whether a contractual contingent fee arrangement might be viewed as a cap on recoverable attorney fees in the more common situation where a party is legally entitled to a reasonable attorney fee by reason of a statute or a contract conferring that right. Our jurisprudence has mapped out a rather pristine formula for calculating such a fee, and I am not prepared to say, in the context of a case where fees are awarded on some other basis, that where a party is contractually or statutorily entitled to a reasonable fee, the contingent fee-calculable only after the entry of judgment-is somehow a cap on what qualifies as a reasonable fee.
123 Indeed, I have my doubts that such would be the case, and for two distinct reasons. First, if a contingent fee equates to the reasonable fee arrived at by employing the pristine formula referred to above, it will be a matter of pure coincidence. The very logic of contingent fee arrangements all but assures, in the context of an individual case, that the fee available to plaintiff's attorney will be unreasonable. An attorney with hundreds or thousands of hours invested in an unsuccessful case may receive absolutely nothing-a completely unreasonable (one might say absurd) result. Conversely, an attorney might reap millions for much less work when a lucrative case settles quickly and on favorable terms. It is a rather bizarre system, but the system exists not to satisfy the "riverboat gambler" predilections of some Bar members, but rather to provide legal services to those who simply cannot afford a pay-as-you-go arrangement. And it works from the Bar's standpoint, over time, when the "winners" and "losers" are averaged out. Thus, trying to jimmy considerations of a contingent fee into the calculation of a statutorily or contractually mandated reasonable fee is conceptually a classic exercise in comparing apples and oranges, if no apples and crayfish. c
TI 24 Second, a contingent fee arrangement is a contractual matter between an attorney and his or her client. As such, it is really of no concern to third parties, including opposing parties who are required to pay, not the fee that the client is required to pay, but rather a reasonable fee. While I am content to leave definitive resolution of the matter to another day,1 it seems to me that the litigant legally responsible to pay a reasonable fee *20cannot be saddled with the amount of a contingent fee if that amount is higher, and likewise ought not be able to have his legal responsibility to pay a reasonable fee subverted by the happenstance that opposing counsel's contingent fee-the fee the client owes his or her attorney-works out to be less than a traditionally calculated reasonable fee-the fee the responsible litigant owes.

. That day may be a long time in coming. Contingent fees are much more common in the tort realm, where attorney fee awards as a matter of statutory or contractual entitlement are typically not available, at least outside the civil rights arena. And footnote 3 of the lead opinion suggests that in the latter context, the relevance of a contingent fee arrangement has already been rejected. It is much less common-although not unheard of-to have a contingent fee arrangement in, say, a contract dispute.