Husain v. Springer (2d Cir. 2007): A silly dispute over a university student election results in federal litigation, and a 44-page decision over a suit where the only remedy sought is $2 plus attorneys’ fees; the district court threw it out, but the Second Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, restores part of the case for further litigation. Neither Chief Judge Jacobs nor Professor Bainbridge is impressed, nor is Eugene Volokh, though he takes issue with the tone of the separate opinion, as Judge Jacobs states that he did not read the majority opinion as a waste of time. The concluding paragraph of the Jacobs opinion:
This prolonged litigation has already cost the school a lot of money that could better have been spent to enrich course offerings or expand student day-care. If this case ends with a verdict for plaintiffs (anything is possible with a jury), the district court will have the opportunity to consider whether the exercise merits an award of attorneys’ fees in excess of one-third of two dollars.
The majority opinion itself takes the strange position that a university’s cancelling of student elections in response to a student newspaper’s violation of election rules by using student-activity funds to endorse specific candidates “chills speech” and thus violates the first amendment.
2 Comments
And this case took somewhat around TEN YEARS??? to get to this point; maybe the circuit court should’ve tossed this case as “frivolous” when the amount asked for was US$2.00 + fees. What a waste of time, money, and paper–for a case which resolution should’ve taken place long ago, and whose resolution now is pointless.
If any of the plaintiffs in this case would, kindly defend yourself here (no links, please!) and tell us why continue this case beyond a point where even a favorable result would seem to have no impact.
I don’t think this has continued all this time on the 1/3 of award contingency model. But more along the lines of the sleazebag Yagmen model where the incentive is to “recover” highly inflated legal fees. He is famous for asking a jury to “send a message” with a $5 award, only to then go back and get himself awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars for his “services”.