A recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch story, “Firm that Sued, Won Over MSD Charge Seeks $4.3 Million in Fees” reports that St. Louis-based Greenfelder, Hemker & Gale are seeking $4.3 million in attorney fees and $458,523 in expenses in the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District (MSD) class action.  The judge in the case, Lincoln County Circuit Judge Dan Dildine invalidated the new storm water service charge, which based fees on the area of a property that cannot retain water.  Richard Hardcastle, the lead attorney in the case for Greensfelder, said in an interview, “We saved the ratepayers $300 million.”  The legal costs would be about 1.1 percent of what ratepayers will save, Hardcastle added. 

The law firm originally submitted a $2.14 million legal bill to the court.  The proposed doubling of attorney fees is part of the “success factor”, Hardcastle explains.  The attorneys in the case are seeking the fees under Missouri’s Hancock Amendment, which says that a plaintiff who successfully challenges a tax or fee shall receive “the applicable unit of government his costs, including reasonable attorneys’ fees incurred in maintaining such suit.”  The plaintiffs’ brief to Dildine said Missouri judges should follow rulings of the California and Florida supreme courts that allow judges to multiply fees.  The action provides “financial incentives for attorneys enforcing important constitutional rights,” the California Supreme Court said in a decision approving the multiplication of attorney’s fees.  The California court said such multiplication replicates the contingency fees that attorneys often charge in civil cases.