New York just saw a huge victory for the 1 percent: Occupy Wall Street’s lawyers.
Last Tuesday, the city settled a lawsuit brought by Occupy Wall Street protesters who claimed police had seized and destroyed their library in November 2011. The city agreed to pay them $47,000. That’s a pittance compared to what civil-rights attorney Norman Siegel’s firm earned for repping the protesters in that suit.
Siegel’s firm pulled in $185,000 in legal fees — four times more than Occupy won for its ruined books. Rather than coming from their clients, about 95 percent of that tab will be picked up by city taxpayers, thanks to a federal law that allows civil-rights lawyers to collect big paydays when they win cases.
“It’s not unusual that firms sometimes get more than the clients,” Siegel said, noting that he had originally sought an even larger fee from the city, about $235,000 in all.
Well, not everyone can be as pure of spirit as the squatters of Zuccotti Park.