attorney and client may contract to allow the attorney to adjust his or her share of the fee from a non-Fund source, so long as the contract caps the fee from the Fund’s payout at the fifteen percent statutory limit
How later courts described this case
- attorney and client may contract to allow the attorney to adjust his or her share of the fee from a non-Fund source, so long as the contract caps the fee from the Fund’s payout at the fifteen percent statutory limit
- permissible limits on attorney fees
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
SHEPARD, Chief Justice,
concurring in result.
It is far from clear that today’s per curiam represents the best policy for determining reasonable fees at the intersection of Rule 1.5 and the medical malpractice statute. This process has morphed from an agreed-sanction disciplinary case into something that looks much like rule-making, except that it has lacked many of the steps thought useful for good rule-making. Partly for this reason, it does not answer a good many questions important to the topic. I join in the outcome largely because the submissions of the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association, especially the brief and the several affidavits, have been so persuasive and the per curiam tracks their request. And because the defendants against whom they file claims (and their associations and related institutions with apparent stake in the outcome) have elected to stand silent, and our Disciplinary Commission has found itself in the awkward position of noting the interests of a client it does not represent, the General Assembly.