A schism hinted at earlier this year has fully emerged between the two attorneys whose case overturned Arkansas' same-sex marriage ban, with one lawyer denouncing the other's request for at least $345,825 in compensation as "unreasonable and excessive."
The lawyers, Jack Wagoner of Little Rock and Cheryl Maples of Searcy, are asking the court to order the state to compensate them for their work in the case. Both say they devoted hundreds of hours to the litigation, which forced them to pass up paying jobs.
But in a nine-page brief, supplemented with a 10-page affidavit, defending his request for $95,748 to $141,880 in fees and costs, Wagoner asserts that he and his firm did almost all of the work on the lawsuit that was first filed by Maples, who is seeking $345,825 to $686,998.
In the filing, Wagoner states that Maples' request "appears unreasonable and excessive."
Describing Maples' initial request for fees, Wagoner states in the pleadings that her original amount of $256,060 made him "uncomfortable."
"I did not understand how she could have billed that amount of time on the case. I could not attest to the reasonableness of the fees she was requesting," Wagoner states in his affidavit.
"I do not like filing this affidavit or filing a separate fee petition from my co-counsel. But I want to be clear that I cannot attest that her fee request is reasonable, and therefore I do not join in it or support it."
Defending his compensation request, Wagoner states that he not only had to pass up work at his law firm, where he charges $295 an hour, but also paid three staff lawyers to work on the gay-marriage case.
"Every hour that I spent on this case was an hour of billable time that I gave up that will not be able to be used to support my wife, two daughters, three dogs and three cats. It literally cost me $295 for each hour I spent on this case," he wrote.
"Further, I paid the lawyers with my law firm by the hour for their work on the case. If not reimbursed for my fees and expenses, I will suffer a substantial out-of-pocket loss from devoting my time and effort to this case."
Fighting the marriage ban was important litigation "striking down an injustice perpetuated against an innocent group of people for no valid reason," Wagoner wrote.
Reached for comment Thursday night, Maples said she was surprised, "angry and hurt" by Wagoner's statements and denounced them as "lies" that "put a cloud over a beautiful piece of work."
"Nothing he says is true. He has allowed his anger to interfere with his good sense," she said. "I can absolutely back up every minute -- and then some -- of the [work] time I have claimed."
She and Wagoner worked independently, and he has no way of knowing what hours she put in or how hard she has worked on the case, she said.
"This was my case. He called me and asked if he could join me. I opened my arms to him and let him in," she said, saying she would submit a written response to Wagoner's accusations in the coming days, possibly within a week.
Maples said Wagoner is still angry and blames her over a dispute that became public in April while the case was on appeal before the Arkansas Supreme Court.
Some of the plaintiffs reported that they had fired Wagoner during a dispute about how to proceed with an issue in the appeal.
Maples said Thursday that the plaintiffs acted on their own and that she had nothing to do with their decision.
One woman told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in the spring that Wagoner had refused to communicate with most of the plaintiffs and would not recognize them on the street. Another woman said she was disappointed by infighting between the lawyers and that Wagoner's position on the appeal issue was holding the case back.
Wagoner, who had other clients among the plaintiff pool, stayed on and capitulated on the issue, which concerned which of the state justices would decide the appeal.
Maples filed the lawsuit challenging the gay-marriage ban on July 1, 2013, five days after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that required the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages. She said the Arkansas lawsuit was the first of its kind in the country.
Wagoner says he first consulted with Maples about joining the effort four days later. He formally entered the case on Aug. 22, 2013, court filings show.
The lawsuit went through four alterations -- adding plaintiffs and refining arguments -- before the case was decided May 9, 2014, in favor of the plaintiffs -- 21 same-sex couples, nine of them already married.
The ruling by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza that legalized gay marriage in Arkansas was subsequently stayed a week later by the Arkansas Supreme Court, which agreed to decide on an appeal filed by state lawyers, but it never did.
The high court dismissed the appeal on June 26, the same day the federal Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages.
Maples and Wagoner, who had applied to Piazza for compensation during the litigation, renewed their fee requests earlier this month.
Wagoner asserts that he and three lawyers from his firm together devoted more than 404 hours to the case over the 11 months of litigation before Piazza, not including time spent in the 131/2 months the case was on appeal.
Maples, a solo practitioner, reports that she devoted about 1,365 hours to the case, beginning three months before she filed the lawsuit and including the appeal.
But the Arkansas attorney general's office, representing the state, disputes that the two lawyers should collect anything for their efforts and has questioned the accuracy of their claims for compensation.
Thursday was the deadline for the plaintiffs' attorneys to submit their responses to that state challenge. Maples reportedly was preparing to submit her response to the state Thursday night.
In his brief, Wagoner states that he cannot fully contest Maples' request for compensation because he doesn't know how much work she put into it.
But Wagoner Law Firm P.A. "performed the vast majority of work related to the litigation," which included writing pleadings, responding to defense motions, drafting the summary judgment motions and conducting "extensive research" that the work required.
"Wagoner Law Firm performed these services with little to no assistance from Ms. Maples," the brief states. "All that Wagoner Law Firm can state with certainty is that Wagoner Law Firm, with assistance from several talented attorneys with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, performed an estimated 95 percent of the litigation tasks -- research, briefing and argument. Wagoner Law Firm will leave it to the court to assess the reasonableness of Ms. Maples' fee request."
He and his lawyers, in consultation with the lesbian rights center, developed the final form of the lawsuit -- the fourth version that won the case -- only a month after joining the litigation, Wagoner states.
In his supplemental affidavit, Wagoner describes the first version of the lawsuit drafted by Maples as "not well-pled or developed," but recognized that the suit was only in its initial stages.
Since he had filed a federal suit also challenging Arkansas' marriage prohibition 10 days after Maples' state suit, Wagoner said, he was concerned that Maples' original pleadings were so deficient that they might bring unfavorable rulings in the state case that could be problematic for the federal litigation.
Metro on 07/31/2015