THE ROBING ROOM

I would not accept Judge Beeler if you are representing a plaintiff on a contingent fee, for the reason that she has a history of fee-slashing decisions. She does not follow the lodestar approach, but reverse engineers her decision to severely cut hourly rates and time, to reach the pre-determined and arbitrary figure she has selected. She was literally fawning and thanking the defense attorney for the defense's reply brief on fees, while not mentioning plaintiff's herculean efforts on the same fee motion. It was in effect, 'Thanks for helping me make my biased decision appeal-proof.' Never mind that the qualified lawyers appearing before her now must, along with their family members, suffer severely reduced rates for an unknown number of future years just because Judge Beeler doesn't like this type of litigation. She blithely ignored past hourly rate approvals in similar cases. Unfortunately, she is an intelligent judge who knows how to write an appeal-proof opinion. And this, in a case where plaintiff's counsel obtained outstanding results. She is also one of those judges who tries to force settlements by restricting the litigation or calling for constant mediations, settlement conferences, and status reports, and then gets arbitrarily mad at whatever side she perceives is inhibiting settlement. It's a lack of civil litigation experience that shows here. The little information about the case that is related at status conferences isn't enough to paint an accurate picture for the judge about who is promoting or obstructing settlement, and she should know that the obstructing side will play Kabuki theater at these conferences. Her constant meddling only made settlement more difficult, gave succor to exactly the wrong side who was obstructing settlement, and ran up attorneys fees.