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Victories over Video-Game Laws Yield Fee Awards
After obtaining court victories in several states against bans on video games deemed violent or sexually explicit, the video-game industry is running up the score by collecting $1.5 million in attorney fees. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), a Washington, DC-based trade group representing computer and video-game publishers, has filed all but one of the suits seeking to overturn new laws that ban the sale of violent or sexually explicit video games to minors.
The $1.5 million in attorney fees has been ordered from three states, a city and one county, including $510,000 from Illinois and $180,000 from Michigan. Fee requests for a total of more than $200,000 are pending in Louisiana and Minnesota. Other recent video-game victories include $318,000 in attorney fees from the city of Indianapolis, $180,000 in attorney fees from St. Louis County, MO, and $344,000 from the state of Washington.
In most cases, judges have issued preliminary or permanent injunctions against the new laws, claiming that they violate the free speech rights of video-game publishers under the First Amendment.
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