CHAPTER 11 - 11-4 CHARGING LIENS

• Jurisdiction: United States

11-4 Charging Liens

Connecticut does recognize a charging lien for an attorney's fees.⁵⁶

In Kubeck v. Cossette,⁵⁷ the Court observed that:

An attorney has a special or charging lien for his or her services to secure compensation for obtaining a judgment . . . for the client. This lien . . . is founded on the equity of an attorney to be paid his or her fees and disbursements out of the judgment he or she has obtained. Thus, an attorney's charging lien . . . gives the attorney an equitable ownership interest in the client's cause of action, and the client's property right in his or her own cause of action is only what remains after transfer to the attorney of the attorney's agreed-on share.⁵⁸

In Cooke v. Thresher,⁵⁹ the court extended the protection of the charging lien against the claims of the client's trustee in insolvency, as follows: "If an attorney has rendered services and expended money in instituting and conducting a suit and the plaintiff orally agrees that he may retain so much of the avails thereof as will pay him for his services and expenses therein and for previous services in other matters, and he thereafter conducts the suit to a favorable conclusion, he has, as against such plaintiff, an equitable lien upon the avails for the services and expenses in the suit, and for the previous services embraced in the agreement; and the trustee in insolvency of the plaintiff, coming to the estate after the making of such agreement, steps into the place of his assignor, and takes the avails as assets burdened by such equitable incumbrance."⁶⁰

In D'Urso v. Lyons, the facts involved a fund obtained by an attorney through litigation on behalf of a deceased client, pursuant to an hourly fee agreement. The fund was the sole asset of the deceased's estate and the plaintiff appealed from the trial court's decision to affirm a probate court decision to uphold the attorney's charging lien against statutory priorities pursuant to probate law. The Appellate Court held that the charging lien in D'Urso protected only "[t]hose fees . . . wholly attributable to the litigation that [Attorney] Shaw had handled on behalf of [his client] Robert D'Urso prior to his death."⁶¹

In McNamara & Goodman v. Pink,⁶² the court held that "[t]his court concludes that the fee agreement between Pink and the plaintiff and the further agreement memorialized in the disbursement statement to have that fee paid from the settlement gave rise to a charging lien which must be given effect...