Wednesday, November 4th, 2009...2:34 pm
9th Cir: Attorney Fees in SSA Litigation
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The 9th Circuit, en banc, has strongly endorsed a contingency fee approach, and rejected a lodestar approach, to attorney fees for prevailing Social Security litigants. Here, the prevailing attorney had a 25 % fee agreement, but reduced the requested rates to reflect the client’s recovery. Nonetheless, the resulting fee (in one of the 3 consolidated cases) was as much as $900/hr. Because the contingency fee agreement permitted the result, and no extraordinary factors counseled against it, the 9th Circuit awarded the requested sum.
Crawford v. Astrue, __ F.3d __ (9th Cir. Nov. 4, 2009)
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