An Act relating to public interest litigants and attorney fees; and amending Rule 82, Alaska Rules of Civil Procedure

Prepared by: Senate Finance
Updated: April 27, 1999

SB 123 makes public interest litigants subject to Court Civil Rule 82 regarding judgments for attorneys fees. Court Civil Rule 82 limits attorney's fees recovery by prevailing litigants to 20 percent of the litigant's reasonable actual attorney's fees incurred on a case resolved without trial and 30 percent for those cases that go to trial.

Additionally, SB 123 prevents legal fees being awarded to a litigant for claims on which they did not prevail. Such awards serve to promote spurious lawsuits, since plaintiffs know they will receive compensation for all costs even if they only win on one of several points. This problem was created by the recent Alaska Supreme Court Decision Dansereau V. Ulmer 955 P.2d 916 1998. Prior to Dansereau V. Ulmer lawyer fees for public interest litigants were only awarded for issues on which they prevailed. Dansereau V. Ulmer sets a precedent that allows courts to award the lawyer fees for all contested points even if the public interest litigants only prevailed on one point.

SB 123 seeks to prevent awards of lawyer fees of $150 or more an hour to litigating organizations that have staff attorney's on salary for $30 - $40 per hour. When organizations are awarded such unnecessarily high lawyer fees they are able to utilize the embellished award to not only pay their in house lawyers but to also finance political and advocacy operations. It is wrong that the current system is being exploited in this way.

The Senate Finance Committee introduced SB 123 to make "public interest litigants" equally accountable for their lawsuits and to protect the state from having to pay excessive lawyer fees for frivolous public litigant cases.

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