The Hindu Business Line : Halt to a lawyer's lucre

HOW true is this time-tested remark! Lawsuits in the US are in abundance and of an amazing variety. A home owner sues the builder or construction company for flaws detected in the building, a patient's family seeks compensation from a doctor for negligence in treatment or death, an environmental activist pleads for the court's intervention to enforce clean up-operations by a factory believed to cause ground or water pollution, and a whole group of residents in a neighbourhood goes to appeal against an unwanted development nearby or widening of a road.

Whatever may be the award to the petitioner in damages or compensation claimed, it is the attorney who invariably reaps a substantial reward.

The recent case of a Southern Oregon teacher, who sought justice through a suit against her college for an unjust dismissal from service, is a typical instance to corroborate the anomaly. Although she won the case after nearly five years since making the petition, the court's sanction of a mere $1 was poor compensation for all the mental agony and monetary loss suffered by her. In contrast, the attorney was to gain more than $450,000 in fees and costs! This was, indeed, an incredible end to a long drawn-out hearing of an appeal for restoration of job and reimbursement of expenses and lost pay.

Luckily for the teacher, the doors of justice were still open. In a total reappraisal of the case, a panel of the US Circuit of Appeals overturned, totally, the lawyer's fees that happened to be disproportionately huge in comparison to the paltry compensation of $1 to the litigant. Thus, an unexpected precedent has been created whereby a check has been made possible on a lawyer's undisputed lucre.

It is not surprising, therefore, that much resentment has arisen among the affected legal practitioners, who feel the decision is discouraging and that fewer lawyers, in future, will take up civil rights cases. Some also believe that public interest petitions may be neglected due to lack of expert legal assistance. Time alone would bring out if these arguments of the legal community would really prove true.

A. V. Swaminathan

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