Attorneys who settled a class-action lawsuit over impermissible strip-searching of county jail inmates were properly awarded a smaller counsel fee than they sought due to their prior experience in filing similar cases, a federal appeals court has ruled.
In a decision issued Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that Northern District Judge Gary L. Sharpe properly considered the settling of two earlier strip-search cases by plaintiffs’ counsel to discount their fee in a third case.
