Europa & Palestine News « Europa & Middle East News
A son of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Abbas, is appealing a judge’s ruling last month tossing out a libel case against the Washington Post Company’s Foreign Policy magazine.
Abbas Son Revives Scandal With Appeal After Losing Suit
ياسر عباس يستأنف ضد الحكمعلى أمل أن يربح عشرة مليون؟؟
يبدو أن السيد ياسر عباس الكندي, أبن الرئيس الفلسطيني منتهي الولاية منذ عام 2009, محمود عباس ماض في مواصلة فضائحه في المحاكم الأمريكية, وكشف المزيد من المستور حول الثروة التي جمعها من دماء الشعب الفلسطيني والمنح المقدمة إليه, ليكون بذلك أول فلسطيني يلوث سمعة فلسطين في الخارج, ويوسع دائرة الأتهام بالفساد لوالده والسلطة الفلسطينية في دول العالم الغربي. ويبدو ان طمع السيد الكندي عباس في الحصول على عشرة ملايين يضيفها إلى الملايين المنهوبة من الشعب الفلسطيني يدفعه في هذه المرة للإستئناف في المحاكم الأمريكية بغية تغيير قوانين البلاد التي تحمي حرية الكلمة والتعبير خلافا لما يجري في نظام والده الديكتاتوري في السلطة الفلسطينية القائمة على قمع حرية التعبير والكلمة وانتهاك حقوق الأنسان
A son of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Abbas, is appealing a judge’s ruling last month tossing out a libel case against the Washington Post Company’s Foreign Policy magazine.
Yasser Abbas’s attorneys filed a notice Wednesday appealing U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan’s Sept. 27 decision dismissing the lawsuit under a District of Columbia law that allows for early termination of lawsuits stemming from statements on matters of public importance.
The suit objected to a commentary Foreign Policy published in June 2012 entitled, “The Brothers Abbas: Are the sons of the Palestinian president growing rich off their father’s system?” The piece was written by the Foundation for the Defense ofDemocracies’ Jonathan Schanzer, who was also named as a defendant in the case.
The appeal will go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
A lawyer for the Washington Post Co., Kevin Baine, had no comment on the development. Attorneys for Abbas did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Disclosures: The editor of Foreign Policy at the time the Schanzer commentary was published, Susan Glasser, now serves as the editor of the forthcoming POLITICO Magazine. Also, some of the attorneys for Foreign Policy and the Washington Post Company have served as counsel on unrelated matters for POLITICO and its affiliated companies. Source of the text / POLITICO.
Attorneys from Williams & Connolly and Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz are seeking more than $200,000 in legal fees and costs for their work fighting a libel suit filed in September 2012 against Foreign Policy magazine and a writer.
Yasser Abbas, the son of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, sued Foreign Policy over a June 2012 article written by Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Schanzer was also a defendant. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan dismissed the case on Sept. 30. Abbas intends to take the fight to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Williams & Connolly partner Kevin Baine, who focuses on First Amendment work, and associates Adam Tarosky and Elise Baumgarten, are seeking $100,481 in legal fees and costs. Levine Sullivan partner Nathan Siegel, an attorney for Schanzer, is asking for $107,174 in fees. Siegel worked on the case with Levine partner Seth Berlin and associate Shaina Jones. (Schanzer had his owner lawyers; he was not an employee of Foreign Policy.)
Baine said in a declaration, accompanying the Oct. 25 fee request, that Williams & Connolly gave Foreign Policy a 10 percent discount on rates. With the discount, Baine billed at $765 an hour. Baine said he clocked a little more than 25 hours in the case. Tarosky and Baumgarten submitted hourly rates of $409.50 and $342, respectively. (On top of the discount, Williams & Connolly, which employs about 250 lawyers, said the firm further reduced its fees in the case by an average of 12 percent per month.)
Tarosky, a sixth-year associate, and Baumgarten, a third-year associate, worked nearly 234 hours defending Foreign Policy magazine, accourding to Baine’s declaration. At the time the suit was filed, The Washington Post, for whom Baine had previously performed legal work over 30 years, owned Foreign Policy. Baine declined to comment today on the fee request.
Levine Sullivan, a boutique firm with 34 lawyers who specialize in First Amendment and media litigation, charged Schanzer an hourly rate of $390 for work and $195 for paralegals. The firm said in court papers that the rates were “as requested and negotiated by Dr. Schanzer’s insurer.” The rate amounted to a 20 percent discount from $575 rate that Siegel and Berlin typically charge, according to court records in the case. Levine Sullivan lawyers said the firm performed nearly 250 hours of attorney work for Schanzer. Siegel, based in Washington, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Baine and Siegel defended their legal fee request in the court filing. The attorneys compared their rates to other Washington lawyers with similar experience in the law. The attorneys pointed to a recent case where U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington awarded attorneys for McKesson Corp. more than $450,000 in fees.
“[T]he rates charged by W&C are materially lower than rates recently approved by courts in this jurisdiction for attorneys of comparable reputation and experience in large law firms. Judge Leon, for example, recently approved rates for attorneys at Winston & Strawn of $780–810 for a senior partner, $525 for a fifth-year associate, and $390 for a first-year associate, all of which exceed the rates charged here.”
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