Court Rulings on Industry Attorney Fees

Contempt Actions: The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, awarded attorney fees for work done on behalf of record companies in a contempt proceeding against the Aimster peer-to-peer file-sharing service. In Re: Aimster Copyright Litigation, Master File No. 01 c 8933, Multi District Litigation # 1425. The district court had issued a preliminary injunction to shut Aimster down but later found Aimster in contempt of the injunction. The court noted that it had broad discretion to award attorney fees and costs to the plaintiffs. The record companies were represented in the contempt action by their regular piracy firm, Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp of Los Angeles, and by two attorneys from the Chicago office of Katten Muchin Zavis Rosenman. The plaintiffs asked the court to reimburse them for a total of 460.6 hours attorney and paralegal work. The district court first agreed that the submission of the hours, but not the dates, each attorney worked on the matter was sufficient, given the finite time of the contempt proceeding. The court also noted that the legal work had been made more time consuming by the pro se status of Aimster founder John Deep, and that the multi-district status of the Aimster litigation “made it both reasonable and necessary for Plaintiffs to retain local and national counsel.” However, the court reduced by half the award for the time that the plaintiffs' paralegals spent monitoring the defendants violation of the preliminary injunction and declined to award travel costs for a Mitchell Silberberg attorney given that the contempt action was litigated through written briefs and by oral advocacy from the plaintiff's national and local lead counsel. The court awarded the plaintiffs a total of award of $103,851, of which $99,682.25 was for attorney fees.

Interpleader Actions: The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York awarded EMI Music Publishing $10,000 in attorney fees and costs incurred in filing an interpleader action over royalties due from the music of Duke Ellington. The Estate of Ellington v. EMI Music Publishing, 03-2911. The dispute involved a claim by Ellington's children to a 40-percent share of the royalties generated from Ellington compositions that EMI Music administered. The district court based its award under 28 U.S.C. Secs. 1335 and 2361 and under Rule 22 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure on the fact that EMI was a disinterested stakeholder that had deposited the royalty funds with the court and received a discharge from the dispute. The court also noted that a related state court action would determine the Ellington children's royalty claim. EMI had originally sought $37,000 in attorney fees and costs, but the district court found that excessive for this type of interpleader action.