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WilmerHale Responds to Federal Judge's Decision in False Claims Act Case
Legal Times
August 15, 2008
William Perlstein, co-managing partner of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, says a False Claims Act case the firm worked on for nearly 10 years was a success, despite a decision by a federal judge this week cutting the firm's legal fees.
WilmerHale began representing Richard Miller, a plaintiff acting on behalf of the government under the False Claims Act, in 1999. He provided information to the government that led to several government contractors pleading guilty to fraud. Wiley Rein had represented Miller from 1995 to 1999.
Miller sued E. Roy Anderson, Harbert Corp., Harbert International, Bill Harbert International Construction, Bilhar International Establishment and Harbert Construction Services to receive compensation for the attorney fees he incurred during his 12-year effort to prove their involvement in a fraud conspiracy against the government. He requested $9.9 million in legal fees, plus enhancements that brought the total amount to $20 million. Enhancements are permitted under the False Claims Act in some cases. Lamberth cut that to a total of $7.5 million.
Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia routinely compliments the work provided by WilmerHale's lawyers, especially the young attorneys who did the bulk of the work on the case, but, in his ruling, he takes the firm to task for what he terms inefficient management of resources, citing the 52 lawyers that worked on the case overtime, and poor timekeeping entries.
Perlstein says that despite Lamberth's decision, the firm will receive much of the legal fees billed on the case. "The enhancement standard is a difficult one to meet, so this is still a great success. It's a very important case for us," he says. "We were comfortable in asking for the fees to be doubled because of the risk we took in working on this case. We knew this was on our dime, and we had to be careful ourselves in our staffing decisions. We knew our recovery was totally dependent on our winning."
In all, Lamberth's decision cuts WilmerHale's attorney fees by 25.5 percent and paralegal fees by 30 percent for inefficient management and poor timekeeping records. Lamberth cuts attorney expenses by 40 percent because vague expense entries are "downright ubiquitous" in the firm's report.
