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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."
the lawyers, of course.
Do they have to pay this in cash, or can they give the defendant part of a CD? After all, each song is worth $150,000 or so...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'm really sorry.
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.
It's sad when it costs you $70,000 to defend yourself against an RIAA suit. At least in this case the RIAA had to pay for the defense's lawyers, but there have been plenty of others were the defendants were on their own when all was said and done. On top of that, the RIAA is well aware of the costs of defending against their lawsuit and uses this cost to force people into settlements.
The whole situation makes me sick.
The summary is mis-leading the reader as it makes it seem like all fees are paid for by the RIAA and the defendant got off untouched. Depending on how solid her fees were, it could still end very badly for the defendant. If her stated fees are actually due, this judgement will still cost her about $46k which doesn't sound like much of a victory to me.
This is exactly the reason why so many capitulate and take the RIAA $3000.00 settlement. maybe, just maybe people will begin fighting these RIAA thugs in suits because of this ruling.
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.
The bill and the justification are available online:
The Bill
The Justification
Interesting reading.
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Qxe4
Even if they did end up paying all her legal fees, plus interest, plus lost wages, the MAFIAA would still be ahead.
The point of these lawsuits isn't to recover "damages". It's to frighten the rest of the country into acting the way they want them to. If their skin were a little darker, it would be called "terrorism".
Not really. That's a fairly modestly-priced lawyer. It's expensive to be in the legal profession--between malpractice insurance, bar membership, various subscriptions to legal services, and everything else, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year just to be an attorney. That doesn't even factor in the operating costs of the business (rent, utilities, supplies, voice/data services, etc.) which of course are themselves in the tens of thousands of dollars for just a small firm. I'm not saying that lawyers on the whole are struggling financially, but that $225 an hour is nowhere near raw profit. What it is is extremely high revenue.
If you took your company's (assume you work for a company that doesn't manufacture anything for the moment) annual revenue and divided it by the number of employees, it would work out to a staggering hourly rate. Obviously that doesn't all go into your pocket. Same with lawyers. The hourly rate (and the percentage cuts from awards) are a law firm's *sole* source of income. It's not directly comparable to the hourly rate you get paid at your job.
Further, what seems to be a good windfall more often than not ends up covering debt from a pro bono case somewhere else. Lawyers take on massive debts to argue cases with the hope that they'll get paid. It's hardly a guarantee. Chasing down clients for money they still owe is something every lawyer is familiar with. That's why big wins are celebrated--it's what creates the "rich lawyer." Most cases, including this one, are nothing spectacular, but they're enough to encourage lawyers to take the risk, now that this gate is open.
Now the decision and order has loaded, it seems that the defendant and her attorneys engaged in gamesmanship and got caught by the judge.
The defendant's attorneys charged for costs associated with answering e-mails, phone calls, and leaving voice mails. He also billed the same work twice by having two attorneys attend the same motion hearings. The Court got real pissy and took away some hours that it thought were due to the incompetence of the defendant's attorneys resulting in things having to be done twice.
Most tellingly, the Court was annoyed that half of the attorneys fees demanded were incurred after the defendant had been declared the victor and had already initially filed for attorneys fees. It seemed that the defendants/his attorneys belatedly realized that they were going to file for fees and had to rack up the hours. The Court found that there was an "increased, almost frenetic activity on the part of counsel for the defendant after it was determined that Defendant was the prevailing party" and was thereby eligible for attorneys fees.
And the defendant's attorney was trying to get away with $1.50 for each photocopied page. The Court granted them $.20. Kinko's charges $0.02.
So it sounds like I was right -- the defendant's attorney was running up the fee request by asking for things that no sane client would ever pay, and no sane attorney would ever ask from a real-life paying customer.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
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.
Actually there was a huge amount of work which Ms. Foster's attorney had to do after the initial, February 6th, decision, due to innumerable motions and other dilatory tactics by the RIAA. Just look at some of the litigation documents (and this list was very selective) in my folder for Capitol v. Foster. I was really shocked by the Judge's knocking Ms. Barringer-Thomson's bill down so far; she did not deserve that. My best guess is that he was trying to protect the record against any kind of appeal from the RIAA.
Despite my disappointment at the amount awarded, an attorneys fee award against the RIAA for more than $68,000 is a very important precedent, one which
-is being taken very seriously by the RIAA, albeit with a slight sigh of relief, and
-is being noticed by lawyers and litigants across the country, as a sign of encouragement to stand and fight.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
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.
From the filing:
[Plaintiffs] further argue that the defendant is not entitled to fees for work that could have been avoided had she assisted the plaintiffs or acceded to the settlement.
She can't charge for attorneys' fees because she decided not to settle? Does that imply that if she had settled, she would have gotten attorneys' fees? What planet are these people from?
Finally, [plaintiffs] contend the case was of too simple and mundane a nature to warrant a fee in excess of $100,000.
Yet they see nothing wrong with a fine of $100,000 per violation for copyright infringement.
How did the judge feel about this?
The plaintiffs argue that the defendant is not entitled to fees incurred after some point when she allegedly "could have avoided [fees] altogether but chose not to do so." Throughout the course of this litigation the plaintiffs have alleged that had the defendant appropriately assisted their copyright infringement investigation and litigation, she could have avoided being sued. The Court has rejected this argument on numerous occasions and declines to entertain it yet again. The defendant was entitled to litigate the claims the plaintiffs chose to bring against her and, as the prevailing party on those claims, she is entitled to recover the reasonable attorneys' fees she incurred in doing so.
Or, in layman's terms: Did your Mom drop you on your head when you were little?
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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.
She asked for over $114,000 but the court only gave her about $68,000, because her lawyers charged too much. For example, the "docket in this case is replete with the defendant's supplemental and corrective filings designed to cure defects in motions and responses that should have been complete and correct when originally filed." (page 8). In other words, her lawyers screwed up, and had to fix their mistakes at her expense. Also, once they learned that she was the winner and their bills would be paid, they started "frenetic activity" which they billed her for. (page 9). Also, they nickel-and-dimed her to the tune of about $1,500 on things like copy and fax costs (they charged $1.50 per fax page, where the court found $0.20 to be "generous"). (page 13).
Ouch.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
It should of course come from the lawyer, who does it at a personal loss. Much like when I set up computers and networking for non-profit charity, I don't charge anyone for those hours, but accept that I won't be paid for those hours, and thus make less. If I charged other clients more to cover getting paid for those hours too, I would be committing fraud.
In Soviet Russia, YOU sue the RIAA.. er... in America, YOU the RIAA sues... nevermind.