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Barrett v. Freise11/24/2003
his performance was exemplary. And the court found the one-third contingency fee arrangement to be the same as that customarily charged in the locality for similar legal services. The petitioners make no coherent argument challenged any of these findings, and they are fully supported by the record in any event. Their primary contention is that the trial court erred in relying upon Taylor v. Shigaki, 84 Wn. App. 723, 930 P.2d 340 (1997) for the proposition that Freise had earned his contingency fee with respect to American States before he was fired. They claim that Taylor is factually distinguishable because there, the client fired his lawyer 'on the courthouse steps' as it were, and then settled with the insurance carrier on the same day notwithstanding a clause in the fee contract that prohibited the client from settling in a manner that would 'exclude the attorneys from their contingent fee.' 84 Wn. App. at 730. As petitioners point out, Freise's fee contract does not forbid the client from settling in such a manner that would exclude the attorneys from their contingent fee. However, the contract does contain a clause granting the attorneys a lien against any proceeds of settlement, compromise, verdict or judgment in accord with the terms of the contract. This case is like Taylor in that here, the court found, based on substantial evidence, that John Barrett, Jr., terminated Freise's representation of Jeffrey 'for the purpose of defeating the contingency fee and convert{ing} the fee entitlement to quantum meruit, which he understood was hourly.' Finding of Fact 34, Clerk's Papers at 1531.
Appeal of Various Factual Findings
Finally, John and Jeffrey Barrett contend: 'The trial court, in its summary judgment, made numerous findings of fact wholly unsupported, or actually contradicted, by the evidence. These errors are so numerous that they cannot possibly be itemized and argued within the page limitations of this brief.' Appellants' Brief at 40. They conclude this section of their brief with these words: 'Many of the findings of the trial court are contradictory, baseless and plainly in error. Some findings seem pulled out of thin air and reveal a most unjudicial lack of impartiality. Such findings should be afforded no weight.' Id. at 46. Sandwiched between these two statements is a litany of contentions, most of which we have already addressed. As for those not already addressed:
Petitioners claim that by approving the contingency fee arrangement, the trial court permitted Freise to recover the equivalent of an hourly fee of $620 per hour for his work on the UIM settlement, and by awarding him one-third of the American States recovery, the trial court permitted a total recovery that is the equivalent of an hourly fee of $2,174.26. They reach these erroneous conclusions by treating the recovery of all the hard costs advanced as fees, and by going through the summary provided to the guardian ad litem and deducting a number of hours, after which they divided the total recovery by the remaining number of hours. But petitioners made a considerable fuss at trial regarding Freise's failure to keep time records for personal injury cases that are the subject of contingency fee contracts. Freise prepared the summary for the guardian ad litem by going back through his records and estimating time spent. Petitioners' own expert testified that many capable plaintiffs' personal injury lawyers do not keep time records for their contingency fee cases. This being so, the trial court was more interested in the results Freise obtained for Jeffrey than in the amount of time he spent doing it. The court found that in terms of total value, including but not limited to the waiver of the medical carrier's su
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