Mother will get money

Judge sets lawsuit settlement at more than $121,000 to cover international custody battle fees, expenses

Web posted October 1, 1998

By Alisa DeMao
Staff Writer

A federal judge awarded more than $121,000 in fees and expenses Wednesday to the mother of two girls entangled in an international custody battle and the lawyers who fought to send them home to Germany from the Augusta area.

Christine Lops spent six months in Georgia while the custody battle dragged through appeals that kept Carmen, 7, and Claire, 6, in the United States.

U.S. District Judge Dudley H. Bowen Jr. ruled in December that the girls' father, Michael Lops of North Augusta, and grandmother, Anne Harrington of Martinez, wrongfully took the pair from Germany during a custody dispute in 1995.

Mr. Lops said he brought the girls to the United States after their mother abandoned the family.

An appeal kept the girls in the United States until May, when they returned to Germany with their mother, who now has custody.

Judge Bowen awarded $102,500 in fees to three attorneys who worked on Ms. Lops' case.

About $19,000 was awarded to cover travel expenses and food and lodging for Ms. Lops and the girls while they waited for the results of an appeal by Mr. Lops' attorneys on Judge Bowen's ruling to send the girls back to Germany.

Mr. Lops and Mrs. Harrington are responsible for paying the money.

The intensity and complexity of the case required the number of lawyers involved and the amount of time spent on it, Judge Bowen said in response to Mr. Lops' attorneys, who claimed the case was ``over-lawyered'' and asked that the fees be reduced.

``To put it as directly as I know how, this was a hotly contested matter,'' the judge said during his decision.

Ms. Lops and her attorneys had asked for more than $195,000 in fees and expenses, but Judge Bowen reduced the amount by reducing the per-hour fee for the attorneys, by disallowing fees for work done in a South Carolina court and by disallowing some expenses, saying they weren't properly documented.

The judge said in August that he also would not award any fees to Augusta attorney John Creson for work done while Mr. Creson's license was suspended from January to May.

The license was suspended because Mr. Creson failed to respond to a complaint investigation by the Georgia Supreme Court's general counsel.