Rule 1.275.Attorney's fees

Attorney's fees in class litigation raise questions an ordinary two-party lawsuit doesn't: who pays the lawyer, and how much is reasonable when the recovery belongs to a whole group of people who may never have met their attorney. Rule 1.275 puts fees for representing a class under the court's control from the start. If a defendant or defendant class is entitled to fees from a plaintiff class under some other law, only the representative parties and members who appeared individually are on the hook -- the same limit rule 1.273 applies to ordinary costs. If a plaintiff is entitled to fees from a defendant class, the court apportions those fees among the class members instead.

Where the class wins, rule 1.275(3) lets the court order reasonable fees and litigation expenses paid out of a divisible money judgment or award. And where the class wins declaratory or equitable relief rather than money, rule 1.275(4) lets the court shift fees to the losing party if the law would allow that in a similar case outside the class context, or if the judgment vindicated an important public interest -- though if the class also recovered a monetary award, fees beyond that award are allowed only to the extent the award itself falls short of covering the fees and expenses. In setting the amount, rule 1.275(5) directs the court to weigh the time and effort the attorney put into the case, the results achieved and benefits the class received, the case's complexity and how unusual it was, the risk the attorney took on given the contingent nature of success, the economic impact on the paying party when fees rest on the public-interest ground, and the criteria found in the Iowa Rules of Professional Conduct.