Dr. Rachel Tudor v. Ezra Young and Brittany Stewart

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma employment law lawyers represented the Plaintiffs who sued the Defendants on an interpleader theory.



Rachel Tudor, was the prevailing party in a previous employment

dispute that we remanded for calculation of attorney fees owed her. Tudor v. Se.

Okla. State Univ., 13 F.4th 1019, 1049 (10th Cir. 2021). On remand she settled for

$1,725,000 on all claims, including attorney fees. Appellants are among Tudor's five

former counsel, who made competing claims for fees out of the settlement amount.

The contract fee for all attorney representation was set at one third of the settlement

amount, less litigation expenses, which came to $563,823.10. Because the total of

the claims of the five attorneys exceeded that amount, Tudor instituted this

interpleader action, naming her five former counsel as claimant-defendants, and she

sought permission to deposit $563,823.10 into the district court's registry, leaving

proper allocation of the funds to the court. Appellants opposed the request and

claimed the full value of their fees, naming Tudor and her original attorney as

counterclaim defendants, and naming the defendants in Tudor as third-party

defendants. Appellants argued that $563,823.10 was insufficient to satisfy an

estimated $2.1 million in combined fees claimed by all five former counsel, and that

Tudor's failure to deposit the estimated $2.1 million was insufficient "to comply with

28 U.S.C. § 1335(a)(1)'s requirement that she pay the full amount of money due into

the registry of the court.” Aplt. App. at 60, ¶10. They argued that because Tudor

failed to deposit sufficient funds, the district court was obliged to dismiss the case for

lack of jurisdiction.

Dismissed.