Orleans Parish jail partnership battles over legal fees

Filed 10h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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As I Figure

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Eric Koch for Anefo · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

The McDonnel Group and Archer Western Contractors, once partners on the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office Inmate Processing Center, argued before the Fifth Circuit over a fee dispute stemming from two earlier legal fights: unpaid capital calls and a secret $2.7 million settlement McDonnel struck with the parish.

Archer Western already won on the settlement issue and collected about $518,000 in fees, upheld on appeal. A jury separately found McDonnel did not breach the joint venture agreement over the capital calls, but lower courts denied McDonnel's roughly $413,000 fee request, prompting Thursday's appeal.

Judges pressed both sides on whether a defensive trial win proves the other side breached the contract, with one Trump appointee noting nothing in the record actually adjudicates a breach by Archer Western. The panel took the case under submission without ruling.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Two companies built a jail together, fought over money twice, and now need federal judges to decide who pays the lawyers for fighting over the money. The contract apparently has one sentence everybody reads differently, which is usually what happens when nobody wanted to write the boring, clear version. Either way, the only people getting a return here wear robes or bill by the hour.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: As I Figure · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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