Legal bill in Hazleton case: $2.3M

Legal bill in Hazleton case: $2.3M

	Published : Fri, 31 Aug 2007 23:16 By : Agencies Print this Story

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) - Plaintiffs who successfully sued to overturn Hazleton's illegal immigrant law want the city to pay more than $2.3 million in legal fees.

U.S. District Judge James Munley struck down the Illegal Immigration Relief Act in July, ruling it unconstitutional. Hazleton has appealed the ruling to the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Lawyers representing the plaintiffs asked Munley on Friday to award them more than $2.3 million in fees and another $45,000 in related costs.

'But for the efforts of the private lawyers and public-interest law groups involved in prosecuting this matter, plaintiffs would not have been able to seriously challenge Hazleton's unconstitutional ordinances and the lives of plaintiffs and other similarly situated residents of Hazleton would have been adversely and irreparably affected,' the lawyers said in a petition.

Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta called the request absurd and said the city would fight it. Barletta has raised $400,000 for the city's legal defense fund, of which about $150,000 has been spent.

The plaintiffs' petition 'illustrates the circus the ACLU brought to this case,' Barletta said. 'They had 20 attorneys sitting in the courtroom at a time, 16 of them doing nothing but running up the bill.'

Actually, the petition lists a total of 37 attorneys as having worked on the case, most of them from the Philadelphia firm Cozen O'Connor, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.

They billed a total of 7,613 hours.

The lawyers defended their fee request as reasonable, saying the city repeatedly amended its ordinance in an effort to put it on sounder legal footing -- making more work for them.

'The consequence of defendant's experimentation was that in this one case, plaintiffs were forced repeatedly to recalibrate their arguments to focus on the ever-changing target,' the petition said.

The city had sought to impose fines on landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and deny business permits to companies that give them jobs. Another measure would have required tenants to register with City Hall and pay for a rental permit.

Hazleton's act was copied by dozens of municipalities around the nation that believe the federal government hasn't done enough to stop illegal immigration.