Court rejects lawyer's request for higher fees
A lawyer for one of the claimants on the multi-million dollar fortune of late business tycoon Larry Hillblom has been denied a higher cut in attorney’s fees by the U.S. District Court here.
James E. Hollman, guardian to Vietnamese Vo Minh Tan, will receive only 30 percent of the arbitration award given to his client by qualified heir claimants of the DHL founder’s estate based on their earlier agreement.
District Judge Alex R. Munson thumbed down his demand for 45 percent cut from the $3.5 million share by Vo despite the lawyer’s argument that the long legal battle had led to extra service to his client.
“The court hopes that counsels’ undoubted disappointment in this decision is assuaged by the knowledge that they acted in the best interests of their client and in the best traditions of the legal profession,” he said in his ruling.
“Being required to abide by their original 30 percent agreement still compensates them reasonably for a job well-done,” the judge added.
Mr. Hollman sought a 15 percent increase from the initial deal with Vo in the share of the money anticipated from the Hillblom’s probate proceedings following what he said further legal services to the mother and child.
This was on top of the $350,000 advance money secured by the lawyer, according to court documents.
He argued that the attorneys for Vo agreed to accept the “relatively low percentage of 30 percent” because they believed that the child was the off-spring of Mr. Hillblom — which was later refuted in the DNA tests — and could recover larger share from his estate.
But Judge Munson threw out the argument, saying this is not sufficient reason to ratify a new agreement based on the professional conduct rules adopted by Commonwealth and U.S. courts.
“Nothing which occurred was either so unusual or unforseeable… that it rendered the original contingent fee contract unfair to the attorneys,” he explained. “There was nothing in this lawsuit at any time that rendered it so legally unusual or complex as to warrant an increase.”
Mr. Hollman last March reached a settlement with the two qualified heirs of Mr. Hillblom in the arbitration, winning $3.8 million from Junior Larry Hillbroom and Mercedita Feliciano.
The CNMI Superior Court in April distributed the remaining assets of the tycoon, who died in a seaplane crash in 1995 near an island north of Saipan, dividing his fortune to four heirs and their pack of lawyers.
