A recent Southeastern Texas Record story, “Appeals Court Upholds 40 percent Legal Fees in Rollover Settlement” reports that Montgomery County District Judge Michael Mayes improperly slashed $277,403 in attorney fees that Orange County District Judge Patrick Clark awarded in a wrongful death suit, Ninth District appellate judges decided on Aug. 25.  Chief Justice Steve McKeithen and Justice Hollis Horton upheld Clark’s approval of fees for the law firms Stewart Cox & Hatcher and Turner & Associates.

The law firms represented the family of Oscar Flores, who died in the rollover of a Ford vehicle with Firestone tires.  The family sued Ford, Firestone, North American Tire and Arrow Ford in 2011 in Orange County district court.  Clark and Mayes shared the case through an unusual arrangement, with Clark acting as trial judge and Mayes as pretrial judge.  Firestone settled for about $3 million, with the family’s lawyers collecting 40 percent.  Mayes chafed for seven years at Clark’s approval of the Firestone settlement. 

When Ford and the family settled, they brought the agreement to Mayes.  He approved it, but reduced attorney fees in both settlements from 40 percent of gross proceeds to a third of net proceeds.  He earmarked the $277,403 difference for a trust fund of a minor plaintiff who suffered injuries in the accident.

On appeal, McKeithen and Horton found no one but Mayes objected to the attorney fees.  They found no one claimed the fees weren’t improperly laid before Clark and that no one asked Mayes to disregard any terms of the Firestone settlement in considering Ford’s proposal.  Horton wrote that he wouldn’t divest Clark of subject matter jurisdiction in a case in which he was given constitutional and statutory authority.