Page:Lake View School District No. 25 v. Huckabee, 351 Ark. 31 (2002).pdf/62

92 ==VIII. Attorneys' Fees== In a separate brief, Lake View vigorously contends that the trial court was in error when it used a "hybrid" method of calculating attorneys' fees which resulted in a fee award of $9,338,035 and no costs. What the trial court should have done, according to Lake View, is award a percentage fee based on a common fund of $130 million, which, it submits, was created by its efforts. Contingent fees ordinarily range from twenty-five percent to forty percent of the common fund, it claims. Thus, its fee award should have been $32,500,000 or $52,000,000. Moreover, Lake View contends that because the benefit to the school districts now exceeds $130 million (almost $311 million), the attorneys' fees awarded should be even higher. Lake View bemoans the fact that the trial court's fee award works out to about six-and-a-half percent of the common fund. Lake View also asks for reimbursement of its costs.

The State also appeals the fee award but contends that it was too high. According to the State, the trial court should have awarded fees based only on a "lodestar" method, which basically is tied to the number of hours attorneys have worked on a case, with the potential for a "multiplier" for contingent and novel litigation. The State advocates a fee based on the total hours worked at an hourly rate of $150 an hour with no multiplier.

In Lake View II, this court held that "an economic benefit did accrue to the State of Arkansas due to Lake View's efforts and attorneys' fees should be awarded." 340 Ark. at 497, 10 S.W.3d at 902. However, we did not hold what that economic benefit was. We noted that "this is a unique case with a unique set of circumstances," and we held that under these exceptional facts, the State had waived its right to sovereign immunity. Id. We stated that we were "not sanctioning attorneys' fees in all public-interest litigation or endorsing a new exception to the American Rule." Id. In remanding this issue to the trial court, we refused to make a pronouncement on how the fees should be paid, stating that this was a task for the trial court to undertake. See id. We mentioned both a percentage fee based on economic benefit or the lodestar approach