A recent BLT Blog post, “D.C. Appeals Court Hears Fee Dispute in TV Writers’ Discrimination Case,” reports that the D.C. Court of Appeals heard arguments in a fee dispute between attorneys who worked on the same side of a decade-long class action on behalf of older television writers.  Local solo practitioners Daniel Wolf and Maia Caplan content that an arbitrator hired to divide up more than $23 million in fees awarded to class counsel based his decision on issues that were outside his authority.  The class counsel had agreed that the fee petition submitted to the court wouldn’t be binding on arbitration, they argued, but the arbitrator nonetheless rejected the idea that the parties could object to the petition and claim different fees in arbitration.

Wolf and Caplan represented a group of television writers who sued studios, network and talent agencies for age discrimination in Los Angeles County Superior Court.  Their co-counsel included attorneys from Sprenger + Lang and Kator, Parks & Weiser, both in Washington, DC.  The writers reached a $70 million settlement with a balk of the defendants in 2010.  The court awarded the class counsel one-third of the settlement. 

The parties agreed to bring any fee dispute to mediation and arbitration to avoid a public scene that might delay or jeopardize the settlement.  The parties went to mediation, and when that failed, to arbitration.  The arbitrator issued a decision in late 2010.  Wolf and Caplan sued in D.C. Superior Court to vacate the award, and Judge Michael Rankin denied their motions, prompting the appeal.

Wolf’s attorney, William Stein of Hughes Hubbard & Reed, argued that the problem is that the arbitrator never made a finding about the reasonableness of the attorney fees, instead finding that he was bound to use the fee petition because of language in the contracts signed by co-counsel.  Wolf and Caplan’s former co-counsel argued that the arbitrator had no legal authority to base his decision on his reading of the original co-counsel agreement.  Contract provisions gave him the right to base his decision on the fee petition submitted to the court, even if the parties disagreed.

For more information visit www.writerscase.com