The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis issued a stay on Tuesday of a federal judge's order sanctioning a Little Rock law firm over a billing dispute.
A week ago, U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson ordered that Josh Sanford and the Sanford Law Firm be barred from practicing in federal court in the Eastern District of Arkansas for two years, citing their efforts to collect what the judge described as inflated attorneys fees in a class-action lawsuit settlement and dragging out litigation over the issue.
Last Wednesday, he amended the suspension to include only cases brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act but left all other sanctions in place.
The law firm won a class-action lawsuit filed in 2018 on behalf of Anthony Vines and Dominique Lewis, who represented a class of workers at Welspun Pipes Inc., accusing the company of underpaying the workers for overtime hours they worked. A complaint accused the company of rounding down hours worked on its electronic time clock, resulting in several hours of unpaid work each month, and of not paying overtime in accordance with federal wage and hour laws.
In May 2020, Wilson refused to approve a settlement in the case, balking at the more than the $96,000 in attorney’s fees that were included, and instead sent the parties back to the negotiating table with orders to “start from scratch” and keep attorneys’ fees out of the negotiations. He accused the Sanford firm of trying to “squeeze excessive fees” out of the company by...
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