Recent Attorneys' Fee Awards
The chart below summarizes hourly rates used by federal courts throughout New York State in recent attorneys' fees awards made in various types of employment cases. In addition to the name of the case, citation, judge making the award and federal district, the chart shows the name of the firm or other entity receiving the award and the hourly rates awarded to the lead counsel (LC), a partner or principal in the firm (P), associates (A), and paralegals (PL). Hourly rates for travel time are excluded, but ordinarily are awarded at a rate equal to one half the attorneys' awarded hourly rate.
And Then There Were None
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, like the state in which its San Francisco courthouse sits, has a mind of its own. Its contrariness, however, has also made it perennially the circuit court that the United States Supreme Court loves to overturn most. On the highly combustible topic of arbitration of statutory claims, however, the full Ninth Circuit beat the Supreme Court to the punch and overruled itself by holding that employers may require the arbitration of statutory claims.
A Word to the Wise
It seems to me that the employment setting has become, to a remarkable degree, a kind of civics classroom in which our citizenry is introduced to and schooled in the promise of a diverse people living in harmony. Anti-harassment policies, diversity goals, EEO training are all classes in the curriculum of an enlightened citizenry. The unenlightened often cross our path on the road to their biased actions in the workplace.
Index
A comprehensive list of key cases discussed in this issue.
Adult Use Amendments Held Unconstitutional
<i>Ten's Cabaret, Inc. v. City of New York,</i> decided last month (NYLJ 9/16/03, p. 18, col. 1), represents the latest skirmish in the long-term battle between the City of New York and owners of adult establishments over the city's efforts to regulate the location (and ultimately the number) of adult uses in the city. In <i>Ten's Cabaret</i>, Justice York of New York County Supreme Court held that the city's 2001 amendment to its zoning resolution &mdash enacted to counteract evasion of the provisions in the then-existing ordinance &mdash failed to pass constitutional muster because the city had not conducted any studies to demonstrate the need for the amendment.
