Posted by John Merchant on July 16, 2010 at 13:08:31:
Under common law there were no atty fee provisions, but a number of states (and Congress for fed laws) have, in specific actions enacted atty fee statutes when suing on certain actions…such as W suing for her atty fees in divorce or child support action, suit on some egregious consumer fraud deal, etc…
What do stats in your state say about your lawsuit/cause of action and whether it could enable you to sue for atty fees?
If nothing then no, your state does not have atty fee statute in that situation.
Even if your state does provide for atty fees to be paid by loser in a deal like yours, likely no thinking lawyer these days is going to go to work for you for no upfront fee to be paid by you.
These days one needs to look hard at cost of litigation to see if a deal’s worth suing over as frequently the costs greatly over-weigh the benefits.
I’d bet I could, in my own file cabinets, come up with a couple of dozen deals gone bad where suit could have been brought but atty fees were prohibitive.