On December 19 an impassioned argument was heard in the Court of Chancery of the state of Delaware, explaining why a group of plaintiffs lawyers deserved a fee that worked out to $35,000 an hour. Two months earlier, the lawyers had won a whopping $2 billion award in a derivative suit brought by shareholders of Southern Peru Copper Corporation and were seeking a proportionately whopping fee. When one of the defense lawyers suggested that such a huge fee would be a windfall, it raised the hackles of one person in the courtroom.
“There’s nothing that’s going to be a windfall about this. Nothing,” this person insisted. “A windfall is someone else bought a Powerball ticket and the wind blew it and it fell in someone’s lap.” Clearly agitated, he kept going for several minutes on this theme. “You know,” he asked, “what is it about lawyers getting money that’s ickier than investment bankers or other people in society?”
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