A Good Start To The Month

Coming off the month of March in which he had wins at the District Court level in both the Woollard and Bateman cases, Alan Gura starts the month of April with news of a fee settlement with the District of Columbia for more than US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan had awarded.

From BLT: The Blog of the Legal Times:

The attorneys who won the landmark D.C. gun case in the Supreme Court in 2008 have agreed to settle a legal fee dispute with the city for $1.5 million, terminating a dispute in a Washington federal appeals court.

The plaintiffs' lawyers, including Alan Gura of Alexandria's Gura & Possessky, who argued the high profile gun rights case in the Supreme Court, had sought more than the $1.17 million a trial judge awarded in December.

While I still think the District of Columbia is getting off cheap, I'm glad to see Alan Gura and Clark Neily finally getting paid for their years of work on the Heller case.

A spokesman for the city said they decided to settle to avoid the "uncertainties" of the appeals process. Given that first and foremost Alan is an appellate attorney, I think this probably was wise on the part of the city.