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RIAA Directed To Pay $68K In Attorneys Fees
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In Capitol v. Foster, in Oklahoma, the RIAA has been directed to pay the defendant $68,685.23 in attorneys fees. This is the first instance of which I am aware of the RIAA being ordered to pay the defendant attorneys fees. The judge in this case has criticized the RIAA's lawyers' motives as 'questionable,' and their legal theories as 'marginal' (PDF). Although the judge had previously ordered the RIAA to turn over its own attorneys billing records, today's decision (PDF) made no mention of the amount that the RIAA had spent on its own lawyers."
I suspected this will noticed by lawyers as much as by anyone threatened. I imagine that cases will be taken on contingency that wouldn't be touched before. Not that I can blame a lawyer. Working for months at the risk of not being paid wouldn't be attractive to anyone. That risk is now much less if your lawyer believes in you.
I do wonder if this really does cover costs though. I couldn't read the link the article posted too - busy - but I did read the New York City lawyer reply indicating he feels the dollar amount isn't enough. I am sure he has a better idea of costs then I do.
I think we should stop referring to the big, bad RIAA whenever possible. One of the reasons this organization exists is to funnel bad press away from specific companies (e.g. oh I dunno, Capitol) and toward an organization that doesn't really do anything on its own. Saying "the RIAA is suing somebody" doesn't really tell me anything.
If, instead, we referred to the actual company(-ies) involved, it would let people know who is really filing these lawsuits. I realize that it's mostly the Big Four who are doing this, but I feel that just slapping the RIAA label onto everything clouds the discussion.
While it's true there are some blatant attempts to rack up the bill here and the court adjusted for that, it's misinformed to believe that the court was "annoyed" by anything. It's all just part of the game. You push as far as you can to see what you can get--you'd be doing your clients a disservice by being conservative with the amount of the reward, especially against a party as pernicious as the RIAA. There's some vengeance there--you make them cough up every penny you can, because it's exactly what they'd do to you when the tables turned.
Moreover, answering emails, phone calls, and voicemail are all billable time. Every attorney charges for those costs. They also charge for long distance airtime. "Billing twice" for attendance is also potentially billable if the services of both attorneys are integral or appropriate for the proceedings. If you've got two people at a meeting from one department, both get paid for the time they spent there. Why should lawyers eat the cost of extra bodies? What you're saying holds true if and only if the presence of more than one attorney is superfluous. Also, given that courts themselves charge attorneys up to $1 per page for photocopying, the $1.50 assessment has to be put into perspective. Copying isn't free--even if you do use Kinko's, there are other expenses related to punching, binding, and preparing documents for filing. I also happen to know that Kinko's charges $.08 for self-serve copies, at least around here, and that's with the corporate discount. They also have a tiered pricing system, but that's beside the point.
The examples you chose are not all pushing the envelope. Most of them are sane, standard, and assessed charges, in point of fact.
Eh, I dunno. It looks like the lady still has $46k in fees to pay. She just doesn't have to pay the lawyer.
A $3k settlement would suck, but I'd sigh, whip out the credit card, and resign myself to not buying any goodies for the next month until it's paid off. $46k would basically ruin my life for the next couple years. I completely understand why people settle.
Now I feel that the effort I made to do technical analysis of the RIAA's evidence and post it here and on another forum was worth it. Even if my particular work didn't help directly. I don't think the lawyers are winning nearly as much as they could be if they had to do all the technical analysis through leagal companies. Also, this kind of situation shows up the RIAA and is likely to slow down their similar actions in future.
The great thing about RIAA suing people is that they're the ones doing the dirty work. But as in the MAFIAA, you can be sure that there is never any specific company that ordered each lawsuit. So how can you blame, say, Capitol?
Boycotting the big fours is a good start, but a good thing would be RIAA-tracking sites like http://www.riaaradar.com/ or some other way people can know. It's very difficult, since idependent labels might have a joint venture with a small RIAA member, but it's probably possible to turn it into some kind of "rotten" percentage.
The problem is how to make it easy to use. A user-friendly, but probably infeasible solution would be if you just took a picture of the bar code of an album, then submitted that image to a search function that would immediately return all the dirt of any company involved in releasing said album.
I lost my sig.
I disagree.
Let's assume legal fees are 100k for both sides. If RIAA have to pay 60k extra for every tenth or so trial the average cost is increasing less than 10% - a marginal change.
On the other hand fear factor is not going down, the defendant still lost 40k, at least few years worth of income (after rent, etc.).
Now think about how much the losers have to pay RIAA, and how much money they get in out-of-court settlements. So even if RIAA loses two thirds of the cases (and have to pay) I think they still would be winning (monetary wise). Not as much as previously, but enough not to stop their racketeering activities.
"Even if they did end up paying all her legal fees, plus interest, plus lost wages, the MAFIAA would still be ahead."
Nah, I used to love music. It used to make me happy and make me think about wonderful things. It used to excite me and relax me, whichever I needed at the time of listening to it.
I bought about a half-dozen of CD's every month, of many different kinds of music. I lovest finding new music and listening to it.
Until this shit started. Almost every time I hear new music now, it makes me think of sleazy bastards in a courtroom, or lying producers with unfounded promises of wealth to naive beginning bandmembers. It now often just makes me angry.
Sometimes it doesn't, but that is very rare now: I have bought four CD's in the last four years.
Maybe someday, when the musicians, bands, and artist shed themselves from the bastards and sleazebags, when music re-discovers their soul, their power to inspire, maybe then I'll feel the 'vibe' too and spend my dollars on music.
Until that day comes, oh I still have some old music that I like, and I'm beginning to get used to hearing the sounds of nature, you know, that what you hear outside of the city when you turn off the music...
The 'Music Industry', that is sooooo 20st century...
Does that come with high-fructore corn syrup or aspartame? No thanks anyway.
They nickle and dimed the Capitol Records. Just because this is what they asked for in a ruling, doesn't mean that is what they were going to charge her. They might have even taken the case pro bono, and agreed to charge her nothing. Doesn't mean they can't still be awarded fees. Well when you are asking for an award from the court, you throw in everything you can think of. Reason is that you want to get as much form the other party as you can and the judge will rarely raise award you more than you ask for.
A question-- is it likely her lawyers will just take the $68K and call it even, or will they bill her the ($114-68)=$46K and expect her to pay? How much is gamesmanship by the lawyers, and how much is genuine out-of-pocket costs to the defendent?
A.