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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.
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.
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.