Sparing a convicted killer who sued true-crime author Ann Rule from a six-figure sanction, an Oregon judge has ordered Liysa Northon to pay only $40,000 of the $209,334 in attorneys' fees that the defense had requested.

“I think it is fair to say that many true-crime books have been researched and written in less time than was spent on factual investigation in this case,” U.S. District Judge Michael O. Mosman said in declaring the billable hours claimed by Rule's lawyers unreasonable.

Northon is serving 12 years in prison for manslaughter after pleading guilty to shooting her husband in the head under “extreme emotional disturbance.” She claimed that Rule defamed her in “Heart Full of Lies,” a book about the slaying, but Mosman dismissed the case under Oregon's anti-SLAPP law in February.

Although Northon originally sued Rule in state court in 2004, the motion for attorneys' fees covered only the litigation of the anti-SLAPP motion. The three-lawyer defense team from Davis Wright Tremaine in Portland, led by partner Duane Bosworth, said they had spent 748 hours on legal research, drafting court documents and factual investigation.

But Mosman found it “beyond comprehension, let alone reasonableness, that litigating a case only as far as a special [anti-SLAPP] motion to strike costs over $200,000 in legal fees, especially considering these motions must be filed within 60 days of serving the complaint and are essentially the first thing the defendant does in the case.”

The plaintiffs' numerous allegations may have made the defense's task “more difficult than usual,” Mosman said in his opinion, but that still does not justify the 179 hours that Bosworth alone spent investigating the facts of the case.

“Assuming he works 60-hour weeks, that means he spent the equivalent of three weeks doing nothing but investigation, which in this case consisted largely of reviewing Ms. Rule's book and her supporting research,” he added.

The Davis Wright Tremaine attorneys are not alone, however, in seeking very high awards of fees in anti-SLAPP litigation. Defense counsel at Leopold, Petrich & Smith in Los Angeles who recently won the dismissal of a “Borat”-related privacy suit requested about $220,000 -– before agreeing to $50,000 in a settlement with the plaintiffs.

Northon could face an additional award of attorneys' fees if she loses the appeal of the dismissal of her case.

The following table lists some other recent fees awards in litigation around the country: