Not surprising, the Goldwater Institute filed an appeal of the City North subsidy decision to the Arizona Court of Appeals.
Also, not surprising, the victors filed a claim for legal fees to the tune of $685,000.
Read what Clint Bolick has to say in the April 24 issue of the Goldwater Institute news letter.
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/AboutUs/ArticleView.aspx?id=2167
Read what the Az Republic has to say about this, including the arrogant statement by Lisa Hauser who represented the developer.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/04/23/20080423phx-citynorth0425.html
5 comments:
Reason #56 why I hate developers. Now the developer of CityNorth is demanding that the GI Institute (which is funded entirely through donations) reimburse them $381,000 in legal fees! Just another way of taking more money from "the public." Developers are parasites.
The City of Phoenix and the developer are doing nothing more than the Goldwater Institute would have done if it had prevailed in the trial court. It is not unusual for a prevailing party to seek an award of attorney's fees in a trial court if there is a legal basis to do so.
Mr. Rosen,
Does a 'prevailing party' include a voluntary participant not named as a defendant in a legal action, in essense, if not in fact, having signed on as an intervenor? Also, why should a municipality be entitled to attorneys' fees when said municipality has their own paid legal staff? If they feel they need a more 'high powered specialist' at every legal turn, then why have a paid legal staff at all?
This is not meant to be confrontational, I simply feel that rather than seeking 'justice for all', the legal community has turned lawyering into an adversarial search for mo' money and gets 'testy' when called to task. That the common citizen must be made fearful that if he does not prevail in a non-frivolous action, he could lose everything, then, in my opinion, the law has become the criminal.
If you read this, please answer.
Mr. Cywan (or Zev, if you'd prefer to be on a first name basis, which I hope you would):
The intervenor would not have been allowed to participate in the case if it had not been able to convince the court that it had legal standing to do so(that is, a protectable interest in the litigation). Once allowed to intervene, a party is entitled to all of the same rights, and has the same responsibilities, as any other litigant. One of those rights is the ability to seek an award of attorney's fees in an appropriate case if it is a prevailing party.
As to why a municipality would be entitled to an award of attorney's fees when it has a paid legal staff, the answer is simply that unless a party is fortunate enough to be represented pro bono, that party has to compensate their attorneys. This is true whether the attorney is hired in-house, or is in a private firm and is billing by the hour. Many governments and other organizations find that it is more cost effective to have an in-house legal staff available full time to answer questions and to provide legal representation. But that should not prevent the organization from being able to recoup the costs of their representation in an appropriate case.
I don't find your questions to be confrontational in the least.
I understand that many people have an inherent distrust of lawyers and the legal system generally. Because I am a lawyer, I know and trust our legal system. While it is certainly not perfect, I truly believe that it works well most of the time.
Mr. Rosen (Tobin), thank you for your explanation; I do very much appreciate it!
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