"Their efforts to keep the results secret are understandable," Tennille wrote in his May decision. "The shocking incongruity between class benefit and the fees ... leave the appearance of collusion and cannot help but to tarnish the public perception of the legal profession."

Sears is appealing Tennille's decision and declined to discuss the case.

Gary Shipman, a Wilmington lawyer who led the class action lawsuit, attacked Tennille's order as wrong on the law and filled with factual errors. Shipman complained that Tennille issued his ruling out of the blue, two years after the last hearing in the case. And Shipman said the judge did not have jurisdiction and therefore did not have the power to make decisions in the case.

"Do you think Judge Tennille's word is the Gospel?" Shipman asked. "There is so much in that order that is wrong."

But a top consumer advocate said Tennille's objections had merit.

"Good for the judge," said Ira Rheingold, the executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, which advises and lobbies for lawyers who bring class action lawsuits.

"Cases like this make it look like a get-rich scheme for attorneys," Rheingold said. "The attorneys collect all the fees, and the consumers get no benefits."

Inflated charges

In 2002, Shipman filed one lawsuit in Wilmington and another lawsuit in Chicago, where Sears has its headquarters.

The lawsuits alleged that Sears charged clients for pricier four-wheel alignments on cars which can only be serviced with less expensive two-wheel alignments. Although the inflated charge is a few dollars for each customer, Sears stood to make millions of dollars from the alleged scheme, given the retail giant's nationwide presence.

Shipman said his lawsuit was inspired by one filed in New Jersey. In that case, the New Jersey attorney general combed through Sears records and identified 12,544 New Jersey residents who had paid too much for alignments. Sears agreed to give $10 cash to each person and to give $500,000 to the Attorney General's Office for consumer protection and expenses.

No notices posted

Tennille criticized the method Shipman used to locate the estimated 1.5 million customers who had been overcharged. Tennille faulted Shipman and his fellow lawyers for not insisting that Sears post notices and place claim forms on the counters of Sears' 843 automotive centers around the country. Sears' billing records were not used, nor were lists of Sears credit card holders.

Rather, Sears advertised in newspapers, which courts have recognized as the least effective way of finding class members -- "an essentially futile gesture," the judge wrote. Sears put notices in newspapers in 25 of the country's largest wheel alignment markets and in Parade magazine and USA Weekend, which are inserted in weekend newspapers across the country.

The newspaper notice produced 317 valid claims nationwide.

"Doing the math in this case is easy," the judge wrote. "For each class member who received a $10 check or $4 coupon, plaintiffs' counsel received just shy of $3,000."

According to Shipman, an expert witness estimated that the newspaper advertisements reached 79.24 percent of the claimants in Sears' top 25 markets for alignment sales.

"We certainly believed more people would take advantage of a 100 percent refund," he said. "We don't know if they found out about it. Many times people just don't want to fill out a claim form."

Defending the fees

Shipman said the legal fees were not excessive because they were based on how much time he and his colleagues from six other law firms had spent on the case.

"Sears had paid their attorneys more than what we had been paid," Shipman said.

Shipman said he never hid results from Tennille. He said that the judge in the Chicago lawsuit had jurisdiction in the case and that Tennille had no authority to issue orders. Shipman said he would have given an accounting of the lawsuit had Tennille asked, and did supply the figures in May 2005.

Though Tennille's order was strongly worded, the judge conceded he cannot undo the settlement approved by the Illinois court in 2005.

Shipman and his fellow lawyers have "been more than adequately compensated by the Illinois court," Tennille wrote. "There is nothing this court can do about that."

The total bill for an independent investigation into a campus cover-up of a student's murder at Eastern Michigan University is nearly $450,000, the lead investigator confirmed Thursday. The financial fallout of the botched handling of information in the dorm room rape and slaying of 22-year-old Laura Dickinson could hit nearly $1.5 million when the costs of the independent probe, severance agreements and anticipated federal fines are totaled.

EMU officials have not said how the those costs could affect the university's budget. But Regent Jim Stapleton said Thursday that the cost of the law firm's report was justified.

"I really don't know how you can put a pricetag on the safety of students," Stapleton said. "The report has shown where we need to improve and how we can go about the business of making our campus safer."

The Board of Regents commissioned the Butzel Long law firm to investigate what occurred in the wake of student Laura Dickinson's death last December. In a nearly 600-page report, Butzel Long laid blame on several administrators for failing to warn the public about the suspicious nature of Dickinson's death, despite significant evidence that pointed to homicide.

That report, and a U.S. Department of Education investigation, led to the firing this week of EMU President John Fallon and the forced retirements of Vice President for Student Affairs Jim Vick and Public Safety Director Cindy Hall. EMU has agreed to pay out about $542,000 in severance and contract agreements with Fallon, Vick and Hall.

The Department of Education cited EMU for seven Clery Act violations - which one expert said could lead to as much as $412,500 in fines - but a decision on the penalties isn't expected for nearly 60 days.

Rich Hewlett, a partner in Detroit-based Butzel Long, said the probe involved 1,831 total hours work, amounting to about $430,000 in attorney fees and $19,000 in administrative and clerical costs.

The law firm's report, released June 8, faulted EMU for a variety of systemic administrative failures - including lax reporting of crime statistics, inadequate disclosure of campus security policies and failure to update its daily crime log.
Despite the probe's findings, Butzel Long said it could not conclude that EMU officials were acting out a desire to protect the university's reputation.

The firm's team of four lawyers conducted 80 interviews and reviewed more than 1,000 pages of documents, Hewlett said.

Butzel Long investigators also worked on EMU's behalf during the Department of Education probe, Hewlett said.

Hewlett would not say if it was the largest probe the firm had done, but said the public nature of the case and the level of detail in the report were noteworthy.
Stapleton said EMU interviewed three law firms before selecting Butzel Long for the job.

Stapleton said the law firm will help EMU analyze new policies as they are developed, and will also review the university's response to the government's report, which is due by Aug. 3.

So far this year, the governor's campaign has paid Winston and Strawn more than $163,000.

The campaign reported raising 374,000 & $352 in the first six months of this year, while spending $767,000 & $551. That left 283,000 & $782 in cash.

Blagojevich campaign spokesman Doug Scofield declined to release details about the legal work performed by Winston and Strawn but said the campaign uses the firm for all its legal work.

The campaign has paid legal fees to Winston and Strawn since 2003.

The amounts increased significantly after a federal investigation was launched into administration hiring practices.

A 1991 law and court consent decree ordered that those suffering from diseases that are newly considered to be service-related could have their cases reconsidered and their back benefits paid. The VA, however, contended this didn't apply to diseases deemed service-related after the law's 2002 original sunset date.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco disagreed in 2005, and the appeals court affirmed his judgment Thursday with some harsh words for the VA.

"Three different Congresses in three different decades have enacted legislation signed by three different presidents, designed to ensure the payment of such benefits to veterans afflicted with Agent Orange-related ailments," Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for himself and circuit judges John Noonan and Milan Smith. "What is difficult for us to comprehend is why the Department of Veterans Affairs, having entered into a settlement agreement and agreed to a consent order some 16 years ago, continues to resist its implementation so vigorously, as well as to resist equally vigorously the payment of desperately needed benefits to Vietnam War veterans who fought for their country and suffered grievous injury as a result of our government's own conduct."

The still-suffering veterans deserve better care than they're getting, he added. "We would hope that this litigation will now end, that our government will now respect the legal obligations it undertook in the Consent Decree some 16 years ago, that obstructionist bureaucratic opposition will now cease, and that our veterans will finally receive the benefits to which they are morally and legally entitled."

VA spokeswoman Laurie Tranter said the department won't comment until it more fully reviews the ruling.

Vietnam Veterans of America was one of the plaintiffs, and Rick Weidman, the group's executive director for policy and government affairs, called Thursday's ruling "a great victory for veterans."

"The court ... clearly is as incredulous as we are at the breathtaking attitude on the part of the VA in continuing to refuse to carry out the consent decree that they agreed to," Weidman said. "It's time for the VA to move forward and carry out the consent decree tout de suite, as soon as possible, with no further delay, no further nonsense."

If it doesn't, he said, the courts should hold individual VA officials in contempt of court and punish them with fines or jail time.

Mr. Morford was named as a temporary deputy, but officials said he was likely to be named as the official candidate for the job after background checks are completed. He would succeed Paul J. McNulty, who is preparing to leave next month.

In the Justice Department, Mr. Morford has earned a reputation for successfully handling difficult assignments with a deft, aggressive style. As a prosecutor in Cleveland, he led the government team that won a conviction in the 2002 corruption trial of James Traficant Jr., a former Democratic representative from Ohio who was sentenced to more than eight years in prison.

In 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft appointed Mr. Morford to lead an internal investigation into misconduct by federal prosecutors in Detroit, an inquiry that caused the government to ask a federal judge to throw out terrorism verdicts against two men convicted of operating a sleeper cell. Mr. Morford went to Nashville last year.

In announcing the appointment, Mr. Gonzales said in a statement: "With 20 years of experience as a Justice Department prosecutor, I am pleased to have a person of Mr. Morford’s exemplary character and integrity in this critical position at this time."

Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who has been scathingly critical of Mr. Gonzales, said the appointment was a positive step. "Mr. Morford starts out with one thing going for him: He’s a career prosecutor and not a politician," said Mr. Schumer, who has led the Senate investigation of the dismissals. "We’ll be watching closely to make sure that the rule of law comes first and foremost under his watch."

A Superior Court judge on Friday signed a judgment that awarded $216,837 along with $39,177 in interest to the Torrance firm of Ayscough & Marar, according to court records.

Jackson’s attorney, Marshall Brubacher, agreed in principle to the judgment on July 26, when he told the judge that going to trial would be costlier and “we want to stop the hemorrhaging.”

The law firm sued Jackson for failing to pay legal fees for preventing the release of some information to the public and to lawyers in civil cases during Jackson’s 2005 criminal trial in Santa Barbara County.

Jackson was eventually acquitted of child molestation charges.

Jackson countersued the law firm but that case was dismissed.

Ayscough & Marar also helped defend Jackson against a lawsuit that claimed the pop star owed $1.4 million to his former business associated, Marc Schaffel.

Last year, a jury awarded Schaffel $900,000 and awarded Jackson $200,000 in a countersuit against Schaffel.

Montreal consumer Olivier Dumoulin started a class-action lawsuit against Dell, arguing that the company wouldn't honour Axim sales made on its Canadian website, before the erroneous prices of $89 and $118 were rectified. The real prices were $379 and $549 respectively.

At issue for the Supreme Court is a caveat used by Dell and a growing number of retailers on the sale of everything from computers to cellphones.

It's a clause that obliges dissatisfied customers to challenge companies through arbitration - and not class-action lawsuits.

"This clause for us is abusive. Its goal is to block class-action lawsuits," said Charles Tanguay, a spokesperson for Quebec's Union des consommateurs, which is spearheading the case with Dumoulin. "What we're defending here is a principle. When a price is advertised, it must be sold at that price."

In 2004, the Quebec Superior Court granted the union and Dumoulin class-action certification.

Each member of the class is asking for Dell to supply the Axim at the transaction price, plus compensatory damages of $100 and punitive damages of $1,000, court papers show.

A lawyer for Dell couldn't be reached for comment yesterday.

Dell's appeal of the Superior Court's decision has broad implications for most Canadian provinces. While such arbitration clauses are no longer permitted in Quebec - their use is also forbidden in Ontario - Friday's decision would set the standard for retailers in other provinces, legal experts say.

"There's a big trend of retailers favouring arbitration clauses," said Frederic Bachand, a McGill University law professor.

Bachand was part of a team of lawyers representing a neutral intervenor in the Dell case.

While the trend is more limited in Canada, Bachand estimates that these clauses are used in more than half of U.S. consumer contracts - or purchases of goods and services.

Arbitration is advantageous for big business because it's done privately - sparing companies potentially negative publicity - and usually less costly, he said.

Some arbitration clauses also force customers to challenge a company as individuals, which could dissuade customers from taking action because of fees.

"What the big-business side is trying to do is to force the consumer to go to individual arbitration," he said. "We've seen some cases that are obviously abusive, where companies are trying to shift the cost (of arbitration) to the consumer."

Dell wasn't trying to gouge customers on fees, Bachand said.

Along with the Dell case, the Supreme Court is also expected to decide on a similar lawsuit involving Rogers Wireless.

A Quebec customer trying to launch a class-action lawsuit against Rogers for high mobile fees was also told he had to go to arbitration instead of court.