A recent article in the Salt Lake Tribune, “Attorneys want $7 million in Navajo Trust Fund Case” reports that attorneys for the plaintiffs in Pelt, et. Al v. Utah seek $7 million in attorney fees and expenses.  The underlying class action, originally filed in 1991, claims the state government mismanaged the Utah Navajo Trust Fund.  The trust was established in 1933 by the federal government to manage 37.5 percent of royalties from oil wells on Utah’s portion of the Navajo Nation for San Juan County Navajos.  The case settled earlier this year for $33 million.  The attorney fees sought are 21 percent of the proposed award.

San Juan County Commissioner Lynn Stevens, who is not a Navajo, said that’s too much.  “I think that’s excessive,” Stevens said.  Brian Barnard of Salt Lake City is one of four attorneys seeking payment for work on the case over the past two decades.  “We haven’t been paid for 18 years,” Barnard said.  The normal rate for such contingency cases is 33 percent, Bernard noted.  Further, Barnard said the proposed legal bills are itemized so that plaintiffs can see exactly all the time accrued and expenses incurred since 1991.  Barnard, along with 3 other attorneys mailed notices to 11,000 Navajo beneficiaries to explain the settlement and legal bills.  Various meetings will be held in and around the reservation in the coming weeks, Barnard said, to answer plaintiffs’ questions.