Legal News

Heller?s Attorneys Go Large, Request Hourly-Rate of $1,069

By Dan Slater

Robert Levy, center, and Alan Gura, right, June 26, 2008. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

If D.C. v. Heller, the landmark Second Amendment case decided in June, is the most significant Supreme Court decision of the century, how should that impact the fees taken home by the winning legal team?

The Legal Times’ BLT blog reported yesterday on a motion for attorney fees and costs filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the attorneys who represented Heller. Alan Gura, of Gura & Possessky, Clark Neily III, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, and Robert Levy of The Cato Institute handled the bulk of the work.

Here’s what they want: $3.5 million in fees for their 3,273 hours of work. That’s $1,069 per hour, nearly twice Gura’s normal rate of $557 per hour, the BLT blog notes. They’re also asking for about $13,200 to cover costs. Here’s the motion.

The lawyers are asking Judge Emmet Sullivan to multiply the fees under a provision of Section 1988 that allows for fee enhancement in exceptional cases “where the result is especially important and there is significant professional risk to counsel in pursuing the litigation.”

The lawyers write: “If this is not an ‘exceptional case’ … we are at a loss to describe what case would qualify.”

D.C. AG Peter Nickles told the Legal Times: “We obviously are going to have to look at it closely. That’s a lot of money. This is not a situation where there was a trial. Everything was done on motions. Certain kinds of work are recognized to be appropriate and certain kinds are not.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 27, 2008 (boomark / email).