http:\/\/www.jsonline.com\/news\/statepolitics\/senate-approves-bill-that-would-overhaul-state-tax-enforcement-132724708.html<\/a><\/p>\r\nThe bill will now go to the Wisconsin\u00a0Assembly, which the Republicans control. No surprise what will happen there.<\/p>\r\n
According to the Journal Sentinel, Republicans\u00a0claim that the bill will help ensure that legal costs don’t get too high in suits involving\u00a0just a small amount of money.<\/p>\r\n
“Democrats said it would gut consumer protection laws,” the newspaper wrote.<\/p>\r\n
And we agree. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
In the case cited by the Journal Sentinel,\u00a0judges would have to act under the presumption that the most a plaintiff could\u00a0recover in legal fes would be three time the amount being disputed in the lawsuit; i.e. if someone was suing for $10,000, the most they could recoup in legals fees would be $30,000.<\/p>\r\n
If there was a special case where the judge thought the award should be higher, he or she could do that. But that provision\u00a0is an amendment to the original bill.<\/p>\r\n
This law will discourage lawyers from taking cases that deserve to be litigated,\u00a0for people who have been wronged, if only for a small sum of money.\u00a0Attorneys sometimes toil\u00a0months and months on a case. They need to be sure that they will be\u00a0reimbursed for all the hard work they have done. That ends with this new law.<\/p>\r\n
As a result, lawyers may not take the case of consumer John Doe, who may be owed what seems like a small amount to some, but is a large amount to him.<\/p>\r\n
The bill was prompted by a case that is perhaps an aberration, and lawyers and those wronged in consumer cases shouldn’t be punished because of it.<\/p>\r\n
A Chevrolet-Pontiac dealer, GOP donor David\u00a0Lynch, was sued for doing almost $5,000 worth of work on a truck without getting the owner’s approval, according to the Journal Sentinel. \u00a0Ultimately, the case was settled, with the dealer anteing up $170,000, which included $151,250 in attorney fees, the newspaper reported.<\/p>\r\n
We don’t know anything more about the particulars of this case, but it did go up on appeal. That involves a lot of legal work. The plaintiff’s lawyer likely was very much due his or her $151,250.<\/p>\r\n
Lynch has been pushing for a bill to limit attorney-fee awards ever since.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
So much for consumer protection in Wisconsin.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Leave it to Wisconsin Republicans to try to cut the teeth from the state’s consumer protection laws.\u00a0\u00a0 Last week Republicans in the state Senate won approval of a bill that limits the attorney fees that plaintiffs can recover in consumer cases, the Milwaukee\u00a0Journal Sentinel reported. The bill passed in a 17-15 vote, with Democrats against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[540],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-wisconsin-limits-attorney-fees"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":743,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions\/743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}