[NY Post]Attorney Harrison Williams should have made $75,000 for work he did on behalf of a prisoner who filed a lawsuit. Instead, an appeals court ruled, he earned $1.50."Don't spend it all in one place, bub!"
The prisoner, who claimed he had his religious rights violated when his dreadlocks were touched, was awarded one dollar.
Oh, yeah. That's one of the basic tenets of the Church of the Subgenius, ain't it?
Williams said the Nov. 15 ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan may discourage lawyers from representing frivolous claims of prisoners.
Wouldn't that be a shame?
The appeals court said Congress limited attorney fees to 150 percent of a jury award when it passed the Prison Litigation Reform Act in 1997, though it conceded the description in the law was "not a model of clarity."
"But since nobody's concerned but us we may have a problem, at least until we can buy enough legislators..."
"A lot of attorneys were probably crapping themselves when they saw that decision," Williams said. "You have to consider there aren't many of these cases economically you can afford to take on."
Richard J. Cardinale, a Brooklyn lawyer who sometimes represents prisoners, said he was not surprised by the ruling.
"The rationale is that a lot of these cases are dubious and that prisoners need to be discouraged from bringing these cases and lawyers need to be discouraged too," he said. "It discourages me from taking small cases."
It's unlikely the law will change, Cardinale said.
"There's no constituency for prisoners or for people who represent prisoners. I have no hope," he said.