Daily Business Review
Florida's Broward Circuit Judge Leroy Moe seemed to tip his hand Wednesday during a hearing to consider Stuart, Fla., litigator Willie Gary’s post-trial request for $100 million in sanctions and $93.1 million in attorney fees in a trade secrets case against electronics giant Motorola.
Moe said he did not want to hear from the scheduled long list of witnesses. "Fees are going to the law firm," he said. "How they split them up is up to them."
The eight-week trial in the $10 billion trade secrets case ended in a mistrial last fall when jurors deadlocked over whether Schaumburg, Ill.-based Motorola stole the idea for a satellite vehicle tracking device from now-defunct SPS Technologies of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Gary's firm represents the former owners of SPS.
Gary said the case ended in a mistrial because two witnesses for Motorola defied Moe's sequestration order and read plaintiff testimony before taking the stand.
"Motorola's multiple violations of the sequestration rule and this court's orders were intentional deliberate, blunt, willful and contumacious," Moe wrote in a Jan. 12 order setting the date for this week's hearing.
Motorola's attorneys have said the error, though regrettable, was not intentional and did not have an impact on the case's outcome.
Gary proposed an hourly fee for himself of $11,000 for 2,200 hours of work or $24.5 million. Manuel Socias, Gary's co-lead counsel, is asking for about $3.1 million. Paul Finizio of Finizio & Finizio in Fort Lauderdale is seeking $1.3 million.
In an interview Wednesday, Gary said Moe already had determined that sanctions and fees were in order. He said Motorola's violation of the judge's sequestration order undid five years of work by the plaintiffs' legal team. "If we had a fair shake, we wouldn't be here asking for attorney fees," Gary said.
In morninglong testimony Wednesday before Moe, Fort Lauderdale plaintiffs attorney Walter "Skip" Campbell, testifying for the plaintiff, said Gary is owed at least the $11,000 per hour he has requested because he is one of the top litigators in the country.
West Palm Beach, Fla., plaintiffs attorney Robert Montgomery testified that fees and sanctions should total $2 billion considering the nature of the infraction and that Motorola estimated the technology was worth $10 billion.
Fort Lauderdale litigator Bruce Rogow testified that Gary has a knack for putting together the right team of lawyers for each of his cases and coming up with unique strategies. "He has extraordinary instincts about cases," Rogow testified. "He has extraordinary instincts about people."
Campbell repeatedly compared Gary to the New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez. "Not every player is in the Rodriguez classification," he said.
On cross-examination by Faith Gay of Quinn Emanuel in New York, Campbell said he did not know of any attorney paid $11,000 an hour for a case that ended in a hung jury. "I'm hoping Mr. Gary will be the first," Campbell said.
Gary and his colleagues offered affidavits stating the number of hours they worked but did not present billing records.
Before the hearing resumed after lunch, Gay was overheard in the hallway referring to the affidavits as "bullshit." In an interview, she said, "They have no separate admissible records of their time."
The hearing on sanctions and attorney fees is expected to last three days.
On Wednesday, there was a carnival-like atmosphere in and out of Moe's courtroom, as prominent attorneys stopped by to watch. One sightseer was Fort Lauderdale criminal lawyer Fred Haddad, who joked, "Hey, I make $11,000 per hour all the time, but I'm a criminal attorney."
Campbell testified that the judge could use what is called the "lodestar calculation" to increase the amount owed to SPS attorneys up to three times their actual billings -- or $93.1 million -- because of the complexity of the case.
"This is not a slip-and-fall case," said Campbell, a partner at Krupnick Campbell Malone Buser Slama Hancock Liberman & McKee.
Gay, on cross examination, asked Campbell how he could justify the fees from the start of the case and not just the time of the violation of Moe's sequestration order. Campbell replied that the whole case was tainted by the testimony, like pie poisoned with the last ingredient.
Campbell, a former Democratic state senator who lost a race for state attorney general last year, invoked the Bible several times in relation to Motorola's witnesses violating Moe's order.
Two lawyers involved in the case, who did not want to be identified, said Moe, during last year's trial, gave Motorola's lawyers a section from the biblical Book of Daniel concerning false testimony against a married woman named Susanna. He handed it out after the witnesses defied his order. One of the lawyers said Moe was visibly upset that his biblical reading assignment wasn't completed.
On the stand Wednesday, it was clear Campbell did his homework. He talked in detail about the Book of Daniel, which described witnesses who falsely testified against Susanna after she refused to give into their desires. They then tried to frame her for adultery. But Daniel split the witnesses up and it became apparent they were lying.
"The two old fellas who testified against old Susanna, they died because they lied," intoned Campbell, who expressed dismay that many in courtroom seemed unfamiliar with the story. "It's not in every Bible, but it's in my Bible."
Despite the huge money at stake in the post-trial motions and the certainty of an appeal, Gary predicted that Moe will act fast. "I think he is going to rule at end of this [hearing]," Gary said.
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