THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 10, 1995 TAG: 9501100330
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
How much is a lawyer's time worth?
Circuit Judge E. Preston Grissom of Chesapeake had to decide last month in the case of a Lotto millionaire who fired his lawyers and refused to pay them.
The Lotto winner, Walter Cole of Elizabeth City, had won sole possession of a $9 million prize, to be paid over 20 years. But in so doing, he went through four sets of lawyers.
Cole fired his first set of lawyers, including Norfolk attorneys Peter Decker and Joel Weintraub, after seven months. After Cole won his case, those lawyers demanded $2.4 million as part of a contingency fee agreement. The lawyers had worked about 1,000 hours.
In October, the judge ruled that Cole had unjustly fired these lawyers and awarded them $850,000, to be paid over 20 years from the Lotto jackpot. That's about $850 per hour of work.
Then a second set of Cole's ex-lawyers came forward, including former Richmond Mayor Henry Marsh. Cole had fired them after two months. They had worked 541 hours.
At first, those lawyers demanded $1.08 million, then dropped their demand to $425,000 - half of what the Decker group got.
Marsh said he deserved so much because he had had a contingency fee contract with Cole. If he had lost the case, he could have received nothing. It was a risk.
But Cole's current attorney, J. Nelson Happy, dean of the Regent University Law School, said Marsh didn't deserve so much money. He suggested a fee of $9,000 to $10,000.
On Dec. 19, Grissom ruled that Cole had unjustly fired these lawyers. He awarded them $115,000, to be paid over 20 years. That's more than $200 per hour of work.
Several factors went into that decision, Grissom said:
The size of the $9 million contested Lotto prize.
The complexity of the case.
The contingency fee and the risk that Marsh and his colleagues might have lost everything.
The fact that a lot of work on the case had already been done by other lawyers.
Public perception. ``Attorneys already have a bad enough image with the public,'' Grissom said.
In the end, the judge said, ``You just can't come up with an hourly rate.'' He did not explain how he arrived at the $115,000 figure. by CNB