Judge in Musk pay package case warned of massive legal fee windfall

The judge in the Elon Musk pay package case is being warned by the Delaware High Court that the massive legal fee windfall is a major risk.

Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick is the judge who ruled that Musk’s massive $56 billion pay package was too much money and ruled it to be not in the best interest of the shareholders. However, the attorneys who took on the case and successfully had the pay package revoked are now set to hit it big with a potential pay rate of $280,000 an hour — an unprecedented amount.

The Delaware High Court told McCormick earlier this month that these massive paydays can “turn into a windfall,” according to a report from Reuters.

Elon Musk’s attorneys plead with Judge to vacate $56bn Tesla pay package decision

A professor at Tulane Law School is quoted in the story, stating that, while some fees, although astronomical, are appropriate, there “is a line where it’s simply past what is necessary to incentivize high-risk cases.”

Of course, high-risk cases deserve high rewards, especially when they are successfully tried. However, is the amount the team of lawyers requests appropriate or even deserved?

That’s where things get interesting. The firms requested an 11 percent fee of the stock that Musk would have gotten if he won the case, which works out to roughly 29 million shares. This is nearly $6 billion in Tesla shares.

They also said they would take $1 billion in cash instead. They believe they deserve it because they won “arguably the largest judgment in U.S. history,” the report states.

This works out to $280,000 an hour, but the highest-paid corporate attorneys are paid around $2,500 an hour. However, a 2012 case that resulted in the largest fee in history at $304 million for a $2 billion judgment against Souther Copper Corp. worked out to about $35,000 an hour.

Musk’s pay package was once again voted on months after McCormick’s ruling and was rectified by shareholders who approved it in an overwhelming fashion. If McCormick decides that the shareholder vote should take precedence over her ruling because the owners of the company, or the investors, voted for it, it puts the Chancellor in a tough position.

Tesla attorney Paul Reed said that Tesla should not be responsible for a large legal fee if that’s the case.

“You asked if Elon Musk was overpaid. We want to ask if the plaintiff’s lawyers are being overpaid,” Reed said.

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