Justia Legal Ethics Opinion Summaries

Ge, then a citizen of China, entered the U.S. on a student visa. After pursuing his education for four years, he enlisted in the Army through the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program, which allows foreign nationals to enlist in the armed forces and thereafter apply for naturalization under 8 U.S.C. 1440(a). Ge filed his application in May 2016. After completing interviews and tests administered by USCIS, he received notice in July 2017, that his naturalization oath ceremony had been scheduled for later that month. Days later, he was informed that the ceremony had been canceled. USCIS had a new policy, requiring that enhanced Department of Defense background checks for all MAVNI applicants before their naturalization applications could be granted.Ge filed suit in December 2018, under 8 U.S.C. 1447(b). The district court directed USCIS to adjudicate Ge’s naturalization application within 45 days. Shortly after the court’s remand order, Ge reported that he had been sworn in as a citizen. The court dismissed Ge’s action. Ge then sought attorneys fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act, 28 U.S.C. 2412, alleging that he was the “prevailing party” and that USCIS’s position was not “justified in law and fact at all stages.” The district court denied his motion, ruling that Ge did not qualify as a prevailing party because its remand was not a judgment on the merits or consent decree that created a “material alteration of the legal relationship of the parties.” The Fourth Circuit affirmed. After the remand order, Ge was still the applicant; USCIS was still the agency that could grant or deny the application. The legal relationship had not changed. View "Ge v. United States Citizenship & Immigration Services" on Justia Law

Moniz managed a staffing firm's (Adecco’s) relationship with Google. Correa was assigned to work at Google. Moniz and Correa sued Adecco to recover civil penalties for alleged violations of the Labor Code. Under the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), an employee aggrieved by alleged Labor Code violations may act as an agent of the Labor Workforce and Development Agency (LWDA) to bring an action to recover civil penalties. If an aggrieved employee settles such an action, the court must review and approve the settlement; civil penalties are distributed 75 percent to the LWDA and 25 percent to the aggrieved employees.Moniz settled her case first. The court approved the settlement. Correa challenged the settlement process and approval, including the manner in which the court treated Correa's and LWDA's objections to the settlement, the standard used by the court to approve the settlement, numerous alleged legal deficiencies, and the trial court’s ruling denying her attorney fees and an incentive payment. The court of appeal reversed. While the court applied an appropriate standard of review by inquiring whether the settlement was “fair, adequate, and reasonable” as well as meaningful and consistent with the purposes of PAGA, it is not possible to infer from the record that the trial court assessed the fairness of the settlement’s allocation of civil penalties between the affected aggrieved employees or whether such allocation comports with PAGA. View "Moniz v. Adecco USA" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs purchased Berkeley property intending to demolish an existing structure and build a new residence. Richards, a licensed contractor, demolished the structure but did not build the new house. Plaintiffs sued Richards alleging breach of oral contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and promissory estoppel. Richards propounded requests for admission (RFAs) asking the plaintiffs to admit the parties did not enter into an oral contract and did not have a meeting of the minds. Plaintiffs denied the RFAs.The trial court denied Richards’s motion for summary judgment finding triable issues of material fact. After the close of evidence, Richards unsuccessfully moved for a directed verdict. The jury returned a defense verdict, concluding that Richards did not make a promise with clear and unambiguous terms. Richards moved for attorney fees and costs (Code of Civil Procedure 2033.420), arguing that the plaintiffs had no reasonable basis to deny the RFAs and “failed to realistically evaluate their claims and perform a reasonable investigation.” The court awarded Richards $239,170.86 in attorney fees and costs. The court of appeal affirmed. the trial court was well-positioned to evaluate the reasonableness issue as it presided over the case from start to finish. Neither the denial of summary judgment nor the denial of a directed verdict precluded the award. View "Spahn v. Richards" on Justia Law

The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's award of over $3 million in attorney fees and expenses to plaintiffs in a settlement involving Missouri's foster-care system. Plaintiffs filed suit on behalf of a group of foster children, alleging that Missouri did not have adequate procedures in place to guard against the overuse of psychotropic drugs. The court concluded that the district court properly placed the burden on plaintiffs to support the hours claimed. The district court then evaluated the billing records, attorney-by-attorney, and disregarded any entries that were excessive or vague, leaving no doubt that plaintiffs had failed to prove their entitlement to all the fees and expenses they had requested. The court also concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in setting the fee award and rejected defendants' contentions to reduce the award. View "M.B. v. Tidball" on Justia Law

Guzman, driving a truck for his employer (Progressive), rear-ended the plaintiff’s vehicle. The plaintiff was driving a truck for his employer. Following the accident, the plaintiff returned to work for three weeks, but then left his employment. During the following months, the plaintiff continued to receive treatment. His former employer’s workers’ compensation insurance carrier, Liberty, paid for the treatment.Plaintiff sued The defendants served a $200,000 offer to settle (Code of Civil Procedure 998). Plaintiff rejected the offer. The parties stipulated that a $256,631.76 workers’ compensation lien existed and that the defendants would admit negligence, but not causation as to the plaintiff’s injuries. The jury returned a verdict of $115,000.Opposing the plaintiff’s fee petition, the defendants argued that the plaintiff should not recover fees and post-offer costs because the verdict did not exceed the section 998 offer. Defendants’ costs totaled $174,830.29. The court awarded the plaintiff $50,600 in attorney fees and the $475.98 pre-offer filing fee in costs. Although Labor Code section 3856 requires costs to be paid from the judgment, the court added the fees and costs to the verdict, then concluded the defense had a net gain over the plaintiff and was the prevailing party and entered an $8,754.22 final judgment in favor of the defendants.The court of appeal affirmed. The court erred by adding attorney fees to the verdict when calculating the net judgment. A $59,354.31 defense judgment should have been entered there was no “judgment for damages recovered” from which the plaintiff’s reasonable litigation expenses and attorney fees or Progressive’s workers’ compensation lien could be paid. (Lab. Code 3856(b)). The defendants had not challenged their $8,754.22 judgment. View "Oakes v. Progressive Transportation Services, Inc." on Justia Law

A putative nationwide class of current and former members sued MEF, a membership-based spa-services company, alleging that MEF increased fees in violation of the membership agreement. The parties settled. In exchange for the release of all claims against MEF, class members could submit claims for “vouchers” for MEF products and services. The district court approved the settlement as “fair, reasonable, and adequate” under FRCP 23(e).The Ninth Circuit vacated. If a class action settlement is considered a “coupon” under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) additional restrictions apply to the settlement approval process. The court did not defer to the district court’s determination that the MEF vouchers were not coupons but applied a three-factor test, examining whether settlement benefits require class members “to hand over more of their own money before they can take advantage of” those benefits, whether the credit was valid only for “select products or services,” and how much flexibility the credit provided. The district court also failed to adequately investigate some of the potentially problematic aspects of the relationship between attorneys’ fees and the benefits to the class, which impacted the fairness of the entire settlement, not just attorneys’ fees. The district court did not apply the appropriate enhanced scrutiny; it failed to adequately address the three warning signs of implicit collusion. View "McKinney-Drobnis v. Massage Envy Franchising, LLC" on Justia Law

B. Reid Zeh filed a lawsuit alleging that the American Civil Liberties Union, Inc. (“ACLU”) had published a post on its blog containing defamatory statements asserting that Zeh, who was the public defender for misdemeanor cases in Glynn County, Georgia, had charged an indigent criminal defendant a fee for his public defense services. The ACLU moved to strike the defamation lawsuit pursuant to Georgia’s anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (“anti-SLAPP”) statute. Zeh then filed two motions requesting discovery. The trial court denied the motion to strike without ruling on Zeh’s discovery motions, and the Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of the anti-SLAPP motion. The Georgia Supreme Court granted the ACLU's petition for certiorari to address what standard of judicial review applies in this situation and whether, under that standard, the trial court erred by denying the anti-SLAPP motion to strike. After applying the proper standard of review to the existing record, the Supreme Court concluded the trial court erred by denying the ACLU’s motion to strike. The Court therefore reversed the Court of Appeals’ decision upholding that ruling. But because the trial court failed to rule on Zeh’s requests for discovery, the case was remanded to the Court of Appeals with direction that it remand the case to the trial court to rule on the discovery motions and for further proceedings. View "American Civil Liberties Union, Inc. v. Zeh" on Justia Law

Moreci sustained work-related injuries assertedly caused by his use of scaffolding constructed by Scaffold Solutions. Moreci received workers’ compensation benefits, paid by Starstone Insurance. Moreci, while represented by the Boxer law firm, filed a personal injury action against third-party defendants, including Scaffold. Moreci settled the case. As part of the settlement, Moreci agreed to assume the defense of Scaffold for claims arising from Moreci’s accident and pay any resulting judgment. Before the dismissal of Moreci’s action, Starstone intervened, seeking reimbursement from the defendants for the benefits it had paid to Moreci. Boxer became associated co-counsel for Scaffold, which filed an answer to Starstone’s complaint in intervention.Starstone Insurance moved to disqualify Boxer, arguing conflict of interest. The trial court held Starstone had no standing to seek the disqualification of counsel and denied the motion. The court of appeal affirmed. Because disqualification would have no effect on the alleged harms, Starstone sought the wrong legal remedy by bringing a disqualification motion. Any harm to Scaffold or Moreci stemming from a breach of the duty of loyalty in any way by their attorneys is “of no concern” to Starstone. View "Moreci v. Scaffold Solutions, Inc." on Justia Law

The court of appeal consolidated appeals from three attorneys’ fees motions by a judgment creditor (Wertheim) seeking over $800,000 for its efforts to enforce a 2009 judgment entered after a jury awarded it approximately $39,000. The court of appeal affirmed the denial of fees as to the appeal bond fee motion but reversed, in part, the denial of fees as to post-judgment enforcement fees. The court noted that even standing alone, these fee claims are striking in relation to the amount of the underlying judgment and also must be considered in light of the more than 40 appeals occasioned by the parties’ competing businesses in the last 12 years. The court concluded that the motion for post-judgment enforcement fees was timely but characterized Wertheim’s litigation strategy as “unnecessary and objectively unreasonable.” View "Wertheim, LLC v. Currency Corp." on Justia Law

The law firm Hepworth Holzer, LLP (“Hepworth Holzer” or “the firm”), petitioned the Idaho Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus or prohibition, seeking relief from a district court order disqualifying it as counsel for Dr. Gary Tubbs in a personal injury lawsuit against Bogus Basin Recreational Association, Inc. (“Bogus Basin”). Bogus Basin was represented by Elam & Burke in the proceedings. Elam & Burke moved to disqualify Hepworth Holzer after an associate attorney who worked at Elam & Burke when Tubbs initiated his lawsuit went to work for Hepworth Holzer and assisted the firm on a memorandum in support of a motion to reconsider filed in the case. The district court granted Elam & Burke’s motion. The district court ordered that “[a]ny attorney associated with Hepworth Holzer, LLP, including [the associate attorney], are disqualified from any further representation of [Dr.] Gary Tubbs in this matter and from providing any information from its files after January 21, 2021, and cannot relay any information discussed or received about this case after January 21, 2021[,] to Tubbs or any new attorney/firm representing Tubbs.” Hepworth Holzer contended the district court’s disqualification and gag order was clearly erroneous and unconstitutional. Finding the district court erred in issuing its disqualification order, the Supreme Court granted Hepworth Holzer's request for mandamus relief. The disqualification and gag order were vacated; and a new judge was ordered to preside over further proceedings. View "Hepworth Holzer, LLP v. Fourth Judicial District" on Justia Law