Herro, McAndrews & Porter, S. C. v. Gerhardt

The sole issue to be determined on appeal is whether the attorney’s fees charged the appellant for services rendered in a prior divorce action were unreasonable and excessive and thus unenforceable.

It is established that courts have the inherent power to determine the reasonableness of attorney’s fees and to refuse to enforce any contract that calls for clearly excessive or unreasonable fees.1 Such inherent power of the court may be exercised either during the action from which the charges for attorney’s fees emanates 2 or in a subsequent suit on that contract for attorney’s services. This is…