There are a lot of similarities between Jarndyce v. Jarndyce -- a fictional case -- and the dispute at issue in this morning's opinion, which is unfortunately all-too-real.
It begins with a simple default judgment in 1999 for $65,000 for attorney's fees allegedly owed to Beverly Hills divorce attorney David Karton.
Which then morphs into a two-decade-plus monster of multiple lawsuits, appeals, collateral attacks, and enforcement actions all across the country -- Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Arkansas, etc. -- raising all sorts of different issues, the unifying theme of which is the attorney's fees allegedly owed to the "prevailing party" in all of the various and sundry related lawsuits. Fee requests that are often monstrously large; to take but one example, a $1.66 million fee request.
(Remember, by the way, that the original default judgment was for a mere $65,000 in fees.)
And I'm not even mentioning the various orders involving sanctions, contempt, etc.
Sometimes litigation takes on a life of its own. A monstrous life.
This is one of those cases.
