Tennessee Injury Law Center
I hired a lawyer to help me with a personal injury case. The case has settled. I agreed to pay him one-third of my recovery and his expenses. He has sent me his expenses and it includes 3 flights on his plane to and from the city where I live. The cost of these flights was $1500 each way – a total of $9000. A commercial flight is only a couple hundred dollars per trip. Do I have to pay this money?
A key factor is the language of your contract. Did the lawyer disclose that he would be traveling on his private plane and the cost of each trip? If all of this was disclosed and you agreed in advance to pay these charges, you are probably stuck with the charges (although there is no harm in asking the lawyer to waive a portion of the charges).
Private plane flight is very expensive, and many lawyers who fly their own plane will not charge the cost of using the plane but instead will only charge the amount that it would have cost to fly the same trip on a commercial flight.