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Enough with the one-sentence blog teasers already!

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Groups Seek $1.1M For Attorneys’ Fees In Video Game Case

WASHINGTON — Two entertainment industry groups are seeking $1.1 million in attorneys’ fees as the prevailing party in the U.S. Supreme Court case this year that overturned California’s ban on the sale of violent video games to minors.

The Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) said considerable expenses were accrued as the case progressed from trial at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

California paid the trade groups $276,000, plus interest, after the state lost at trial, and paid $94,000 after losing at the appeals court.

Most of the groups’ case to the Supreme Court was handled by a team of eight attorneys and a paralegal from the Appellate and Supreme Court Practice at Jenner & Block LLP in Washington.

Led by veteran Supreme Court counsel Paul Smith, the EMA-ESA legal team reportedly spent at least 321 hours on the case, making the firm’s hourly rate $765.

In their motion for attorneys’ fees and expenses, the associations argued that the case was about civil rights, and the state should reimburse for costs.

The associations’ legal fight “vindicated important First Amendment rights and enjoined enforcement of an unconstitutional law,” the motion read.

The chief executive officer at the Entertainment Software Association said in a statement that officials were misguided in seeking two appeals in the case.

“From the start of this misguided legislation, then-Governor Schwarzenegger and specific California legislators knew that their efforts to censor and restrict expression were, as court after court ruled, unconstitutional and thus a waste of taxpayers’ money, government time, and state resources,” CEO Michael Gallagher said.

The video game ban was authored by state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, when he was a member of the Assembly. The bill was signed into law Oct. 7, 2005, by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R). The legislation was codified at Chapter 638, Statutes of 2005.

The law was set to take effect Jan. 1, 2006. Shortly after the bill was signed in October 2005, the groups filed their challenge. The plaintiffs asserted that the ban violated protections in the U.S. Constitution that guarantee freedom of expression. They also argued that the statute raised equal-protection issues because it was vague.

The Supreme Court, in its 7-2 ruling, held that the law violated the First Amendment, noting that the obscenity exception to the First Amendment cited by the state applies only to depictions of sexual conduct.

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, in writing the majority opinion, said the state’s attempt to create a wholly new category of content-based regulation that is permissible only for speech directed at children” was “unprecedented and mistaken.”

He wrote, “Like the protected books, plays, and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas—and even social messages—through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot, and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player’s interaction with the virtual world). That suffices to confer First Amendment protection.”

The case is Brown v. EMA/ESA, No. 08-1448, slip opinion, U.S. Supreme Court, June 27, 2011. The ruling is available at http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/08-1448.pdf.

By Chris Rizo, reported from Sacramento, Calif.