U-46 lawyers blasted for bill

A nine-page document recently filed by two teams of lawyers for Elgin Area School District U-46 shows why costs in the four-year-old racial discrimination lawsuit continue to mount -- and show no signs of letting up.

The judge overseeing this stage of the lawsuit in federal court called a $14,775 bill for the nine-page document "shockingly excessive."

The Feb. 8 motion opposed a request for a deadline extension from the attorneys for the families suing the district.

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Magistrate Judge Michael T. Mason rejected that request for an extension March 5. The Chicago and Washington, D.C.-based teams of U-46 lawyers then asked the court to force the plaintiffs to pay the cost of producing the Feb. 8 opposition filing.

The district's lawyers said they had been saddled with unnecessary expenses in opposing the extension request by Futterman and Howard, the firm representing the Elgin families.

Of the nine pages the district had filed, three presented a legal argument.

Four pages detailed the case's background. The remaining two pages contain lawyers' signatures.

Yet Chicago-based Franczek Sullivan and Washington, D.C.-based Hogan and Hartson said their costs to produce the nine pages were $14,775.

Futterman and Howard lawyers had asked U-46 to produce more electronically stored information from the files of school officials and consultants.

The deadline for that phase of evidence exchange was supposed to end Nov. 30.

Mason denied the request for an extension on March 5, saying it was untimely.

Arguments on the issue should have ended there, Mason said.

Instead, Franczek Sullivan filed 18 pages requesting legal fees from the plaintiffs for the U-46 Feb. 8 filing.

Stated in the request for fees were the hourly rates for attorneys. Hogan and Hartson lawyers John Borkowski and Marie Sneed listed their fees as more than $500 per hour.

In denying their request, Mason said the filing was unnecessary -- and unsolicited.

The court, he noted, "is perfectly capable of reviewing the history of a case in order to determine whether a motion is timely."

Moreover, he said, "the court finds that defendant's request for $14,775 to file a response brief is shockingly excessive."

This was not the first time Mason chided either side for unnecessary responses or paperwork.

"The amount of work plaintiffs expect this court to undertake is ridiculous," Mason told lawyers at a hearing last week.

Instead of reading the hundreds of pages filed by both sides on privilege log discrepancies, Mason ordered lawyers to work things out among themselves.

Privilege logs are lists of all the documents each side believes are privileged and immune from having to be turned over to the other side.

Minutes from closed school-board meetings and the files of district consultant Beatriz Arias are both contained in these logs.

The lawyers met Tuesday, unsupervised, in an attorney-witness room at the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago.

"Court is not going to do the work for you," Mason said. "You need to work this out."

To date, U-46 has spent more than $4.6 million in defense of the lawsuit.

The extent of defense fees is important, legal experts say, because they set a benchmark for settlement costs.

Some of those costs could include covering the plaintiff's attorney fees -- which in this case likely will exceed district expenses.

Filed in February 2005, the lawsuit claims U-46 violated the rights of black and Hispanic students by placing them in crowded, older schools; busing them farther and more often than white students; and providing them inferior opportunities.

Pricey paper

In producing a nine-page response to a court motion, U-46 legal teams at Washington, D.C.-based Hogan Hartson and Chicago-based Franczek Sullivan submitted these charges:

Hours Cost

Hogan Hartson reviews motion 2.75 $1,395

Franczek Sullivan reviews motion 3.9 $1,218

Hogan Hartson researches response 14 $6,634

Franczek Sullivan researches response 2 $620

Hogan Hartson reviews, revises response 7 $4,435

Franczek Sullivan reviews, revises response 1.5 $473

Total 31.15 $14,775

*Sources: Court filings by Hogan Hartson and Franczek Sullivan law firms