Louisiana Personal Injury Lawyer Blog

If a person defaults on student loan payments, the loan issuer can obtain a order from the court, directing an employer to withhold money from the person’s earnings until the defaulted loan has been paid in full. A Bossier Parish School Board (“BPSB”) employee stopped paying her student loans. In order to recover the default amount, the student loan company hired a collection agency, Pioneer Credit Recovery Inc. (“Pioneer”) top. Pioneer sent BPSB an order from a court (making them a garnishee) requiring it to deduct the employee’s earnings to a sufficient amount to make payments on the loan. BPSP complied, taking money out of the employee’s paycheck monthly, until the default amount was completely satisfied.

Once the loan was paid off in full, Pioneer sent BPSB notice stating it could stop the deductions from the employees wages. BPSB complied with the release order and ceased deducting any further funds from the employee’s paycheck; however, BPSB continued sending Pioneer money as a result of a clerical error. The error went on for some time, so long that BPSB overpaid over five thousand dollars of its own funds. Upon discovering the error, BPSB demanded a refund from Pioneer in the amount it had overpaid. Pioneer replied that since they already sent the overpayments to the employee they had no further obligation to pay BPSB back. Based on a belief that Pioneer still had an obligation to refund the money, BPSB filed a lawsuit to recover the overpayment and the case proceeded to trial.

In support of its claim, BPSB presented an argument based on a theory of payment for a thing not owed. See La. C.C. arts. 2299  and 2300. Pioneer did not deny that it received the money; however, they argued BPSB was at fault for failing to comply with the rules for withholding and further they ignored the order stating they no longer had to make the payments. Furthermore, Pioneer argued that all overpayments had been refunded to the employee under the mistaken belief that it was hers. The trial court agreed with BPSB holding that Pioneer had received a payment it was not owed and was bound by law to refund BPSB. The trial court based its decision on a finding that BPSB had made the payments, not the employee, and restoring the overpayment to the employee did not amount to restoring it to BPSB.

Antitrust laws protect competition and prevent monopolies. Ultimately, they are meant to protect consumers by ensuring healthy competition. Yet it is a common misconception that antitrust laws protect individual competitors in the marketplace; that each unique competitor is itself the competition that antitrust laws seek to protect. False. Antitrust laws are designed to protect competition – the integrity of the marketplace in which competition occurs – not individual competitors. See Brown Shoe Co. v. United States, 370 U.S. 294, 320 (1962). This is a lesson that Felder’s Collision Parts, Inc., a Louisiana company learned the hard way.

Felder’s is a Baton Rouge based dealer of after-market auto body parts. It sells body parts that are congruent with a major auto makers (“GM”) vehicles, but are not manufactured by GM. Felder’s filed an antitrust lawsuit against All Star dealers and GM alleging that GM’s “Bump the Competition” program was an illegal predatory pricing program which violated Louisiana and federal antitrust law. This GM program allowed competitors who purchase genuine GM parts for resale to sell those parts at a price designed to be lower than the local competitor’s price for the after-market equivalent of the same part. This bottom-line price was often lower than what All Star paid GM. The program subsequently allowed All Star to not only recoup the loss, but also recover a 14% profit.

The District Court ruled against Felder in his antitrust claims, reasoning that he fell short in his attempts to sufficiently delineate the relevant geographic market and to allege below-cost pricing. Because the Louisiana law claims were dependent on the federal antitrust claims, these claims were also dismissed. Felder’s appealed, alleging that the District Court erred in adding the payback amount to the price at which All Star sold its parts to customers.

It  costs money to file a lawsuit against a party who has wronged you, and it also costs money to defend yourself when another party brings a lawsuit against you. Imagine taking on those costs only to lose the case in the end — and then imagine having to also pay for the winner’s attorney’s fees.

The general rule in the United States, known as the American Rule, is that each party only pays their own attorney’s fees, regardless of who wins. This is unlike some other countries, such as England, where courts often require the losing party to pay the other side’s attorney’s fees. One leading policy behind the American Rule is to ensure that potential plaintiffs aren’t discouraged from bringing meritorious lawsuits out of fear that, if they lose, they will have to incur even more costs by having to pay the other side’s lawyer. There are exceptions to the American Rule, however. One common exception is where there is a statutory provision requiring the losing side to pay attorney’s fees to the winning party, as illustrated in a recent case in Baton Rouge.

In Heck v. Triche, the district court found (and the appellate court affirmed) that the defendant, Wayne Triche, was liable under state law — not federal law — for securities fraud. After this finding, however, the plaintiffs requested an award of attorney’s fees pursuant to Louisiana laws (La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 51.712 & 51.714; Local Rule 54.2). The plaintiffs eventually submitted the documents needed for the district court to determine the reasonable amount of attorney’s fees. The district awarded attorney’s fees pursuant to a federal statute, 15 USC § 78r, in the amount of $121,800.