I know whereof I speak. I have experienced it first hand.Contingency fees in Connecticut are limited to 33% and no more. The Connecticut General Statutes expressly allow the court to reduce attorney's fees when they are sought in recovery of damages, including hourly rates and flat fees. In each case the attorneys are required to justify their fees to the court through descriptions of the work performed and time spent in the performance thereof. In some cases the Plaintiff can recover his/her attorney's fees from the Defendant depending upon the cause of action.

With respect to your citation to 28 U.S.C 1332, et seq....The citation would seem to weaken your argument since the law upon which you rely predates the complaint contained in your above post, and would seem to address the issue of a remedy for exorbitant fees. The case law for which you have provided citations also seems to predate this remedial statute which would supersede prior conflicting case law as of the date of your post. Connecticut has already had its own laws on the books for many years accomplishing the same objective. I would be surprised if other states did not also. If not, the client has recourse to complain to the state's ethics/grievance committee about an overcharge. The Attorney's Code of Professional conduct in each state addresses the issues of attorney's fees.

As to Hooters Restaurant case, the $4,000,000.00 attorney's fees seem to be in line with the standard 33% usually charged in contingency fee cases. It is not exorbitant given the size of the case or the amount of work involved. If the attorney's had lost the case they would have received nothing. In many instances this is the only way that litigants can afford to initiate a case. In the alternative, the individual states make legal aid available to indigent litigants on a pro bono basis or at reduced fees in many cases.

Whether the litigants were adequately compensated with $6,000.00 each would seem to depend on the individual's circumstances. If they were covered by insurance, they get the $6,000.00 on top of the insurance proceeds under the collateral sources rule. I am assuming that there was personal injury involved. If not, $6,000.00 would seem to be adequate unless some type of hardship can be shown.

The Plaintiffs are given a fair opportunity to prove their damages. The facts of the case and the evidence by which these facts are proved exist long before the attorney's get involved in the case. This is also true of the circumstances that render evidence inadmissible. If the evidence is inadmissible or the facts are not strong enough to support a judgment ... that is hardly the attorney's fault. The best any litigant can expect is to have the evidence admitted through the reasonable use the rules of evidence, and hope that the trier of fact assigns appropriate weight to the evidence. There are no guarantees in litigation. It is a roll of the dice every time.

If the restaurant owner had to petition for bankruptcy...that is a risk of doing business. It would seem that his bankruptcy was the result of the way he ran his business rather than a function of the attorney's fees that he was required to pay. I would be interested in knowing if he bankrupted out his attorney's fees in the process. That is why you never go into business without incorporating or forming an LLC, and carry adequate liability insurance.

I am not familiar with your BancBoston case, but it seems highly unusual that the court would approve a settlement such as this. I have never run into a case like this in 22 years. However, $91.33 hardly seems like a huge amount of money for attorney's fees to roll the dice in litigation.  Here in Connecticut people spend more than that for an evening of fun at one of the casinos. The Plaintiffs are always given the opportunity to opt out of the class and to seek their own cause of action through the legal counsel of their choice at a fee that is acceptable to them.

It is interesting that you should cite this case at this time because my wife just received a notification over the weekend of a settlement of a class action suit involving exorbitant rates charged on a credit card  issued by a bank. She will be receiving compensation without ever having done anything more than opting into the class. The case was filed in l996. I reviewed the matter, and for the amount of work that was done, the attorneys are welcome to their fee in this matter.

By the way you certainly have the right to represent yourself in litigation if you don't want to pay an attorney. It is not as easy a job as you seem to think. It is kind of like trying to remove your own appendix. Would you tell the physician that you are going to do it yourself?

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