If there was any question Harris County needs contingent-fee attorney help in litigating a complex environmental case, it was answered by looking across the counsel table at the corporate defendants and their lawyers who opposed the government's fee contract, Vince Ryan says.
The Harris County Attorney says he sat with two of his assistants while a private lawyer the county had retained argued why the county's contingent-fee contract met statutory and constitutional muster during oral argument before Houston's 1st Court of Appeals in November. Meanwhile, the defendants in the case appeared with a dozen big-firm lawyers in the courtroom to oppose them, Ryan says.
