Lawyer asks for fee of $11,000 per hour
You read that correctly. No typo. $11,000. Per hour.
The full story is over at Law.com. Here’s how it goes. Florida litigator Willie Gary is requesting $93.1 million in fees and $100 million in sanctions for a trade secrets case against Motorola. An eight-week trial last year ended in a mistrial when jurors announced htey were deadlocked. At issue was the claim that Motorola stole an idea for a stellite vehicle tracking device from SPS Technologies.
Gary claims that the trial ended in a mistrial because two witnesses went against the judge’s order and read the testimony of other witnesses. Motorola said that it was intentional and didn’t affect the outcome of the case.
Attorney Gary says he worked 2,200 hours on the case, and should be paid $11,000 per hour, for a total of $24.5 million. He says he should get this fee because he is one of the top litigators in the country. Co-counsel is also asking for millions in fees. A witness then testified that judge could use the “lodestar calculation,” which would increase the attorneys’ fees to up to three times the actuall billings because of the complexity of the case. This gets us up to $93.1 million.
So actually, that would be $33,000 per hour, wouldn’t it?
