According to papers filed in the Brooklyn federal court on Thursday, the attorneys from Levy Ratner and Scott & Scott
, and those from the nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights, have submitted a fee application to the U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis.
The cumulative fees demanded amount to more than $ 8 million. The lawyers had been representing a group of minority firefighters in a discrimination case that had dragged on for five years. They had been retained on contingency basis by the Vulcan Society, an organization of black firefighters which was successful in challenging and changing the recruitment and hiring practices of FDNY.However, the reply brief submitted by New York City stated that demand for fees needed to be “substantially reduced as excessive, duplicative, unnecessary, vague and, in some cases, highly questionable.”
The city also suggested that the judge should postpone deciding on the motion until the city’s appeal on the case is decided by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. According to the city, the final degree of success affects contingency fees, and the final outcome is yet undefined as long as the case is pending before a superior court.
However, objections to lawyer’s fees at the court of Garaufis have become a routine affair with the city, as has been the rejection of such objections. Richard Levy of Levy Ratner said that the city “completely misunderstood the facts and how we did our billing.”
If the city’s logic is accepted, then contingency fees of lawyers can be kept in suspension until a matter is resolved by exhausting the appellate process, regardless of whether it takes two years or twenty.
The discrimination case has been a bone of contention for the city of New York as in March, Garaufis held that the city owed $128.7 million dollars in gross back pay to black and Hispanic firefighter candidates who were either denied employment or delayed employment due to discriminatory practices.
According to the lawyers representing the minority groups, following success, fees should be paid by the city and not deducted from the back pay award for people who had been discriminated against by the city.
