The Pennsylvania Superior Court dealt with an unfortunate confluence of a hyper-litigious party and two parents who could not resolve their disagreements over custody of their infant child. Before the child was a year old, Father filed a complaint for primary custody, but at the time, Mother had custody. Mother claimed that Father was violent … Read more
In Austin v. Thyssenkrupp Elevator Corp., the Pennsylvania Superior Court heard an appeal from an order of the Court of Common Pleas denying a motion for imposition of an attorney’s charging lien. In an underlying personal injury suit, the parties orally agreed to a settlement. However, the plaintiff later developed cold feet. After the trial … Read more
In Tarta Luna Prop. v. Harvest Rest. Grp., the Appellate Division was tasked with determining whether a lease and construction dispute between a landlord and its restaurant that resulted in litigation warranted the Chancery Division’s order compelling the restaurant to pay its landlord $1 million in attorney’s fees. The Appellate Division noted that a Chancery … Read more
In Doe v. Rutgers, a former student at the School of Business at Rutgers filed a request with the school for a multitude of records under the Open Public Records Act, N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1 to -13. The student requested his own records and the records of other people from the school. The Appellate Division held that … Read more
In Uniontown Newspapers, Inc. v. PA Dept. Corr., the Pennsylvania Supreme Court addressed the propriety of the Commonwealth Court’s assessment of sanctions and attorney fees based on a finding of bad faith and willful and wanton behavior by an agency responder under the Right to Know Law (65 P.S. §§ 67.101-67.3104). After the PA DOC … Read more
Ippolito v. Ippoplito involved a dispute about an attorney’s lien asserted by one of Husband’s former attorneys on an escrow account holding the net proceeds of a sale of marital property. During the divorce proceeding, the trial court recognized Husband’s theoretical entitlement to half the marital assets, but, because Husband failed to comply with his … Read more
In B.B. v. Mell, after Mell was convicted in a federal criminal court for victimizing B.B., who was 15 years old, B.B. sued Mell for damages and quickly sought a prejudgment writ of attachment of Mell’s vast assets. After the trial court entered an order compelling the payment of $26,026.50 to Mell’s attorney from B.B.’s … Read more
The Appellate Division in In re: Guardianship of Dinoia held that the trial court had the authority to compel a county Adult Protective Services unit to pay attorneys fees for a lawyer who was court appointed to represent an allegedly incapacitated person.
The Appellate Division in Seigelstein v. Shrewsbury Motors, Inc., reiterated the importance of the “lodestar” principal regarding attorneys fees originally set forth in Rendine v. Pantzer, whereby the starting point in calculating such fees is the number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate.
In Szwerc v. Lehigh Valley Health Network, the Superior Court affirmed the trial court, which denied as untimely Szwerc’s petition for attorney’s fees. The Court held that a motion for counsel fees is properly addressed by a trial court, even though an appeal from the underlying final order was pending that could have changed the … Read more