discovery of who pays attorney fees

In most cases, the information is not discoverable beacause as a general rule each party is responsible for their own attorney's fees and the attorney invoices may be protected by the attorney-client privilege. However, there are cases where the other side is claiming that you are responsible for their attorney's fees.

Full Answer

Is discovery of attorney fees permissible in a civil case?

The majority of courts hold that discovery of an objecting party’s attorney fees is permissible under these circumstances. As one court held, “the defendant’s fees may provide the best available comparable standard to measure the reasonableness of plaintiffs’ expenditures in litigating the issues of the case.”

Can the opposing/contesting party seek Attorney’s Fees records?

Oftentimes, the party that prevailed serves discovery on the opposing / contesting party to discover their attorney’s fees records. The opposing / contesting party typically objects to this discovery as being irrelevant. But, not so fast… The Florida Supreme Court in Patton v.

What are the penalties for misuse of the discovery process?

CCP section 2023.030 states " (a) The court may impose a monetary sanction ordering that one engaging in the misuse of the discovery process, or any attorney advising that conduct, or both pay the reasonable expenses, including attorney's fees, incurred by anyone as a result of that conduct.

Who pays the attorney's fees in a divorce case?

In the United States, the rule (called the American Rule) is that each party pays only their own attorneys' fees, regardless of whether they win or lose. Even so, exceptions exist.

When do attorneys' fees get awarded?

When do you grant attorneys' fees?

What is attorney fee statute?

Why do judges use equitable remedies?

What happens if you don't have the funds to pay your attorney?

Can a judge grant attorney fees?

Do you have to pay the other side's attorneys' fees?

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About this website

Are attorney fees discoverable in California?

In a much-anticipated ruling, the California Supreme Court held on December 29, 2016 that legal invoices are protected by the attorney-client privilege, and therefore, with some exceptions, need not be disclosed under the Public Records Act.

What is a discovery in lawyer terms?

To begin preparing for trial, both sides engage in discovery . This is the formal process of exchanging information between the parties about the witnesses and evidence they ll present at trial. Discovery enables the parties to know before the trial begins what evidence may be presented.

What questions Cannot be asked in a deposition?

You have a right to refuse any questions about a person's health, sexuality, or religious beliefs (including your own). The opposing attorney will have to explain how your answer has a direct bearing on the case in order to compel you to answer. Privileged information.

What are some tools used by attorneys for discovery?

The three primary written discovery tools are interrogatories, the request for production of documents, and the request for production of documents to a non-party. Interrogatories consist of a set of written questions prepared by the attorney that are then sent to the other party in the case.

What is the next step after examination for discovery?

After your Examination is concluded, however, you may discuss your evidence with your lawyer and your lawyer may be able to tell you what evidence was helpful and what was not and explain how your evidence and the evidence of the insurance rep might impact strength of your case.

Which of the following Cannot be obtained during discovery in a case?

E-mail cannot be obtained during discovery. A deposition can be used at trial. A summons is served on a defendant and a subpoena is served on a witness.

How do you answer tricky deposition questions?

How to Answer Questions in a Deposition: 5 Ways to AnswerAlways Tell the Truth. ... Listen to the Question in Detail. ... Dissect Any Compound Questions. ... Stand Up for Yourself During Questioning. ... Take Your Time Answering Deposition Questions. ... Admit to Mistakes or Inconsistencies in Your Answers.

How do you win a deposition?

9 Tips for a Successful DepositionPrepare. ... Tell the Truth. ... Be Mindful of the Transcript. ... Answer Only the Question Presented. ... Answer Only as to What You Know. ... Stay Calm. ... Ask to See Exhibits. ... Don't Be Bullied.More items...

How long after deposition is settlement?

On this point, I would say the answer would be an average of 3 months before or from your trial. For clarity, I'm distinguishing between a “settlement offer” and a “final settlement”. Settlement offers are all over the place.

What is the first step in the discovery process?

The first phase of the discovery process is the written discovery phase. During this phase, your attorney may send and receive requests to produce documents, requests for admissions of facts, and written interrogatories.

What is oppressive discovery?

1. Discovery- Inappropriately burdensome demands. Any party may obtain discovery regarding any matter, not privileged, that is relevant to the subject matter involved if the matter is itself admissible in evidence or appears reasonably calculated to lead to admissible evidence CCP §2017.010.

What can be asked in discovery?

Here are some of the things lawyers often ask for in discovery: anything a witness or party saw, heard, or did in connection with the dispute. anything anyone said at a particular time and place (for example, in a business meeting related to the dispute or after a car accident that turned into a lawsuit)

What are the 5 types of discovery?

There are basically six types of discovery in family court: 1) interrogatories; 2) requests for production of documents and inspection 3) requests for admissions; 4) depositions; 5) subpoenas duces tecum; 6) physical and mental examinations.

What is the difference between discovery and investigation in law?

Black's Law Dictionary defines "investigate" THIS WAY: "To inquire into (a matter) systematically . . . ." "Discovery" is defined as "compulsory disclosure, at a party's request, of information that relates to the litigation . . . ." (Black's Law Dict.

Which are the elements of discovery of a lawsuit?

Discovery enables everyone involved to know the facts and information about the case. Discovery may be completed before settlement negotiations occur and certainly before a trial beings. Discovery consists of four key actions: interrogatories, requests for production, requests for admission and depositions.

What happens if the defendant does not give me responses to my discovery requests?

Failing To Respond To Discovery Can Lead To A Dismissal Of Your Case With Prejudice. In the practice of law, the discovery phase can be your best friend or your worst nightmare. Interrogatories, requests for documents, and depositions can make or break your case.

How Do I Get the Other Side to Pay My Attorney Fees If I Win a Lawsuit?

It is a common question: how does one sue to get back their attorney fees in a lawsuit? Whether a family law case, a contract dispute, or a tort action, many believe that if they win their lawsuit they should be entitled to recover their attorney fees from the losing side.

What happens when a judge orders someone to pay your attorney fees and ...

Answer (1 of 9): You always owe your attorney their fee. Someone might be required to reimburse you, but that is between you and them, not them and the attorney. If they are ordered to pay a judgment and do not, they can be found in contempt of court. What’s more, all the money spent to recover ...

Can You Make the Other Side Pay Your Legal Fees? | Pospisil Swift LLC

You’ve just been sued. Or perhaps you’ve been injured or defrauded and want to sue someone. Invariably, one of the first questions clients have for us in these situations is, can I make the other side pay for my legal fees?

If I sue someone and win, do they have to pay my lawyer fees?

The following question was submitted to John Roska, whose column, "The Law Q&A," ran in the Champaign News Gazette. Question. In a court case, how does one side end up responsible for the other side’s lawyer fees? If I sue and win, does the other side have to pay my lawyer fees?

How Do Lawyers Get Paid If They Lose a Case? | Kitay Law

(619) 442-0542 275 East Douglas Ave., #111 El Cajon, CA 92020

If I am sued and I win, does the losing party have to reimburse me for ...

Generally, according to the American Rule, each side pays their own attorney's fees and costs. However, under some circumstances attorney's fees and costs are awarded statutorily to the winning party, or there may be a contractual agreement between the parties that the losing party will be responsible for attorney fees and costs.

What is the Family Code section for attorney fees?

Family Code sections 2030, 2031, and 2032 govern need-base attorney fee awards in family law cases. Unlike the CCP, these are not in the nature of "sanctions." These statutes require the court to look at the relative financial circumstances of the parties before ordering fees. They make no reference to fees as sanctions. The Family Code section that authorizes courts to award "sanctions" is section 271.

When was the discovery cutoff date?

Here, it appears the date initially set for trial of the action was February 8, 2007.... Thus, the discovery cutoff date was in January 2007, and discovery closed at that time by operation of law.

How do family court judges abet abusers?

Some family court judges unwittingly abet these abusers by failing to consider the amount of effort and attorney time that is required to obtain discovery from recalcitrant litigants and to provide adequate compensation to the attorneys, and their clients, that are forced to file motions to compel under the Discovery Act. If one cannot recover the costs of forcing the other side to be transparent and produce evidence before trial (or RFO hearing) that the requesting parties needs, then many family law litigants who cannot afford the costs of litigation will be forced into a trial or other adversarial hearing with inadequate preparation and backup, which will make it far more likely that they receive an unjust result. Unfortunately, many family court judges fail to award discovery sanctions in an amount that covers the cost of filing them, or in an amount that would deter further misconduct.

Why did the Boblitt outcome create a furor among the family law attorney community?

The reason it did was the Court correctly interpreted the existing discovery statutes that apply to family law proceedings, under authority of the CCP.

What is the purpose of dividing marital property and setting support awards in California?

Dividing marital property and setting support awards in California family law proceedings is a daunting task for the practitioner seeking to obtain the critical evidence to prove or defend against a claim, particularly because of the discovery gamesmanship that family law attorneys and litigants engage in, when attempting to hide the ball and so provide incomplete (or no) information that makes the orderly processing of these types of cases nigh possible. Lisa Bloom is a poster child for these kinds of Shenanigans.

When is discovery automatically reopen?

Family Code section 218 states: “With respect to the ability to conduct formal discovery in family law proceedings, when a request for order or other motion is filed and served after entry of judgment, discovery shall automatically reopen as to the issues raised in the postjudgment pleadings currently before the court.

Which section of the Family Code authorizes courts to award sanctions?

The Family Code section that authorizes courts to award "sanctions" is section 271. Motions to compel, whether in the famlaw or civil context, are outrageously expensive for the litigants and require a huge wind-up expense even before they may be filed. Civil Rule of Court 3.1345 mandates that: "Format of discovery motions.

What is evidentiary hearing?

The parties are entitled to an evidentiary fee hearing to determine the reasonableness of your fees—to determine the reasonable hourly rate and number of expended hours. Oftentimes, the party that prevailed serves discovery on the opposing / contesting party to discover their attorney’s fees records. The opposing / contesting party typically ...

How to contact David Adelstein?

Please contact David Adelstein at [email protected] or (954) 361-4720 if you have questions or would like more information regarding this article. You can follow David Adelstein on Twitter @DavidAdelstein1.

Peter J Tomao

Even if attorney fees are NOT protected by the attorney client privilege, a court may quash a subpoena to obtain information regarding them unless the requesting party can show some relevance, Good luck. THESE COMMENTS ARE NOT LEGAL ADVICE. They are provided for informational purposes only.

Paul Y. Lee

In most cases, the information is not discoverable beacause as a general rule each party is responsible for their own attorney's fees and the attorney invoices may be protected by the attorney-client privilege. However, there are cases where the other side is claiming that you are responsible for their attorney's fees.

Alan James Brinkmeier

No, I would think the payment of legal fees is protected by the attorney client privilege.

When do attorneys' fees get awarded?

It's common for attorneys' fees to be awarded when the contract at issue requires the losing side to pay the winning side's legal fees and costs. This usually occurs in a business context where the parties have specifically included an attorney fee requirement in a contract.

When do you grant attorneys' fees?

This type of equitable remedy—granting attorneys' fees to the winning side—is often used when the losing side brought a lawsuit that was frivolous, in bad faith, or to oppress the defendant, and the defendant wins. Also, once in a while, a judge will grant attorneys' fees in cases of extreme attorney misconduct, to warn the offending attorney.

What is attorney fee statute?

One type of attorney fee statute that's common in many states allows a judge to require attorneys' fees to be paid to the winning party in a lawsuit that benefited the public or was brought to enforce a right that significantly affected the public interest.

Why do judges use equitable remedies?

Judges can use an equitable remedy to require the losing side to pay attorneys' fees if they believe it would be unfair not to do so. (In law, equity generally means "fairness," and an equitable remedy is a fair solution that a judge develops because doing otherwise would lead to unfairness.) This type of equitable remedy—granting attorneys' fees to the winning side—is often used when the losing side brought a lawsuit that was frivolous, in bad faith, or to oppress the defendant, and the defendant wins.

What happens if you don't have the funds to pay your attorney?

If you don't have the funds to pay, your attorney will likely recommend bankruptcy. Attorneys' fees are generally dischargeable, meaning you can wipe them out.

Can a judge grant attorney fees?

Also, once in a while, a judge will grant attorneys' fees in cases of extreme attorney misconduct, to warn the offending attorney. Find out what to do if you're upset with your attorney.

Do you have to pay the other side's attorneys' fees?

courts have significant discretion when it comes to the awarding of attorneys' fees, and while judges do not generally like departing from the American Rule, they might require a losing side to pay the other's attorneys' fees in certain limited situations. A state court judge can also impose an "additur" increasing the amount of a jury award, which, in effect, can have the same result, but again, it's rare. You shouldn't count on receiving additional funds through either of these mechanisms.

Who pays for deposition transcripts?

You pay the court reporter for the deposition transcript. However, under recent case law the party producing discovery pays the costs of copying the records.

What is a Disclaimer?

Disclaimer- The information you obtain at our web-site or through postings on such sites as this...

Is litigation expensive?

Unfortunately, litigation is often costly, and the parties usually start out bearing their own costs, with possible shifting of costs to the other side, depending on a variety of factors. The above is not intended to be legal advice, but may be used for general information.

Can a defendant shift costs to you?

You pay your own costs. The defendant may attempt to shift costs to you .

What is the difficulty of requiring discovery to be proportional to the needs of the case?

One fundamental difficulty with requiring that discovery be proportional to the needs of the case — as alluring as this principle is in theory — is its informational demand . Neither the parties nor the judge can quantify with any certainty the most relevant proportionality variables: how much the case is worth, how much discovery will cost, or how much the information will affect the likelihood of recovery (including how much follow-on discovery might affect this calculus). Equally problematic is that the parties often have a private incentive to engage in discovery that, from society’s viewpoint, is disproportionate.

What would happen if each party bore its own costs?

If each party bore its own costs — and another 2015 reform hinted that judges should consider this “requester pays” approach more broadly — then an omniscient plaintiff would not have requested the initial discovery: the plaintiff would expect to expend $7,000 to yield a benefit of $5,000. But on facts that were styled differently, it could be shown that the requester-pays approach (as well as the loser-pays approach adopted in countries other than the United States) would also lead to inefficient discovery. The sad reality is that the private incentive to invest in litigation often diverges from the public goal, represented inter alia in the proportionality principle, of cost-effective action by the parties.

Does a toughening of summary judgment standards for plaintiffs suppress settlement values for plaintiffs’ claims across the board?

More generally, as Samuel Issacharoff and George Loewenstein have shown , any toughening of summary-judgment standards for plaintiffs suppresses settlement values for plaintiffs’ claims across the board; the same effect seems likely under the authors’ proposal.

Is the producer pays or loser pays rule better?

The authors argue that this rule is better than pure producer-pays, requester-pays, or loser-pays regimes, including the present producer-pays approach with a proportionality principle. A lose-summary-judgment-and-pay-the-discovery-cost-differential rule particularly targets the problem of asymmetric discovery, in which one party (typically a defendant) has access to far more information than the other party (typically the plaintiff). In a producer-pays world with asymmetric information, the plaintiff has an incentive to ask the defendant for significant amounts of information as a means of driving up settlement values. To recur to the example above, if we assume that the plaintiff’s discovery requests would require the defendant to spend $60,000 to respond, the defendant has an incentive to settle even a frivolous case for substantial value. By shifting the differential between the plaintiff’s and the defendant’s discovery costs (in other words, the measurable extent of the asymmetry) to the plaintiff when the plaintiff persists in prosecuting the case despite the lack of a “genuine dispute as to any material fact,” a plaintiff’s incentive to engage in “impositional discovery” (discovery so costly that it shakes a defendant down to settle a meritless case) is vastly reduced.

Why is attorney fee information irrelevant?

To the extent factual information about hourly rates and aggregate attorney fees is not privileged, that information is generally irrelevant and nondiscoverable because it does not establish or tend to establish the reasonableness or necessity of the attorney fees an opposing party has incurred. A party’s litigation expenditures reflect only the value that party has assigned to litigating the matter, which may be influenced by myriad party-specific interests. Absent a fee-shifting claim, a party’s attorney-fee expenditures need not be reasonable or necessary for the particular case. Barring unusual circumstances, allowing discovery of such information would spawn unnecessary case-within-a-case litigation devoted to determining the reasonableness and necessity of attorney-fee expenditures that are not at issue in the litigation.

What is reasonable attorney fees?

When a party requests an award of attorney fees, the party must establish that its request is reasonable, meaning that the time spent on the case by its attorneys was reasonable in the context of the factual and legal issues in dispute, and that its attorneys’ hourly rates are reasonable in the community in which the case is venue d. The party on the other end of the motion, of course, has the right to challenge the fee request. When such a challenge is made, the moving party may counter by seeking discovery of the objecting party’s attorney fees in the case. This is usually done for two reasons: (1) to try to back off the objecting party by creating the risk that its own attorney fees will be discoverable, and (2) to argue to the court that the best evidence of what is reasonable is what the objecting party paid in litigating the same legal and factual issues in the case.

What is a party's litigation expenditure?

A party’s litigation expenditures reflect only the value that party has assigned to litigating the matter, which may be influenced by myriad party-specific interests. Absent a fee-shifting claim, a party’s attorney-fee expenditures need not be reasonable or necessary for the particular case.

Is it risky to oppose an opponent's request for attorney fees?

Because Wisconsin has not decided this issue as of yet, and other jurisdictions are split on the issue, it may be risky to oppose an opponent’s request for attorney fees on the grounds that the time spent by its attorneys was excessive or its attorneys’ hourly rates are unreasonable, particularly if it is anticipated that the attorney fees you spent likely exceed the attorney fees spent by your opponent .

Is discovery of attorney fees permissible?

The majority of courts hold that discovery of an objecting party’s attorney fees is permissible under these circumstances. As one court held, “the defendant’s fees may provide the best available comparable standard to measure the reasonableness of plaintiffs’ expenditures in litigating the issues of the case.”.

When do attorneys' fees get awarded?

It's common for attorneys' fees to be awarded when the contract at issue requires the losing side to pay the winning side's legal fees and costs. This usually occurs in a business context where the parties have specifically included an attorney fee requirement in a contract.

When do you grant attorneys' fees?

This type of equitable remedy—granting attorneys' fees to the winning side—is often used when the losing side brought a lawsuit that was frivolous, in bad faith, or to oppress the defendant, and the defendant wins. Also, once in a while, a judge will grant attorneys' fees in cases of extreme attorney misconduct, to warn the offending attorney.

What is attorney fee statute?

One type of attorney fee statute that's common in many states allows a judge to require attorneys' fees to be paid to the winning party in a lawsuit that benefited the public or was brought to enforce a right that significantly affected the public interest.

Why do judges use equitable remedies?

Judges can use an equitable remedy to require the losing side to pay attorneys' fees if they believe it would be unfair not to do so. (In law, equity generally means "fairness," and an equitable remedy is a fair solution that a judge develops because doing otherwise would lead to unfairness.) This type of equitable remedy—granting attorneys' fees to the winning side—is often used when the losing side brought a lawsuit that was frivolous, in bad faith, or to oppress the defendant, and the defendant wins.

What happens if you don't have the funds to pay your attorney?

If you don't have the funds to pay, your attorney will likely recommend bankruptcy. Attorneys' fees are generally dischargeable, meaning you can wipe them out.

Can a judge grant attorney fees?

Also, once in a while, a judge will grant attorneys' fees in cases of extreme attorney misconduct, to warn the offending attorney. Find out what to do if you're upset with your attorney.

Do you have to pay the other side's attorneys' fees?

courts have significant discretion when it comes to the awarding of attorneys' fees, and while judges do not generally like departing from the American Rule, they might require a losing side to pay the other's attorneys' fees in certain limited situations. A state court judge can also impose an "additur" increasing the amount of a jury award, which, in effect, can have the same result, but again, it's rare. You shouldn't count on receiving additional funds through either of these mechanisms.