Hot discussion: The meaning of "Attorney fees to prevailing party in any dispute"

Frank Wang wrote:

We have a hot discussion on the exact meaning of "Attorney fees to prevailing party in any dispute" in the language pair of English-to-Chinese. While more peers agree on that it means that "the prevailing party should be compensated ", more than one peer thinks the other way around.
The context is as below:
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Dispute Resolution
1. Any Member would be able to submit any disputed factual or legal issue to a single arbitrator for resolution
2. Arbitrator’s decision would be binding upon the parties
3. Venue: location of Member that did not bring suit
4. Attorney fees to prevailing party in any dispute
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What's your idea on this?
Thanks!

Frank Wang wrote:

Hi Attila,

Thanks for your reminder and it is understandable to me.

By posting this topic here, I didn't think of it just as a KudoZ topic. My intention was to hear ideas from a wider pool of English-related friends who were interested to input.

If this is unfortunately inappropriate, deletion of it is not a problem to me.
Frank

Shirley Lao wrote:

Hi Frank,


It is my understanding that some KudoZ participants in the English monolingual KudoZ forum are both native English speakers and have legal background. It may be a good idea for you to post this question in the English monolingual KudoZ forum for their ideas.






[Edited at 2008-10-27 08:29]

Attila Piróth wrote:



Hi Frank,
Just a few points why KudoZ is a better choice:
1.) Impact: Few users get notification emails about forum topics - many more get notifications emails about KudoZ questions in their language pair and specialty fields. I would think thousands of native English speakers will receive an email about your KudoZ question. Of course, they can see your topic on the ProZ.com home page - but only for a limited time, after that they will have to search among recent posts. By the time translators in the US get up your topic may have disappeared from the home page.
2.) KudoZ now offers a discussion option as well. Together with the "request clarification" option and the agree-disagree possibilities, it is particularly well suited to such questions. Judged from the titler of your first post, your question seems to be mainly linguistic in nature. The discussion of the current practice of attorney fees can be relegated to the Discussion section of the KudoZ question.
3.) Search options: by typing "attorney fee" in ProZ.com term search, future users will stumble upon your question and the answers - and the discussion, all in one place. They might find it very useful.

Perhaps Marcelo's answer has completely settled the issue, in which case posting a KudoZ question might be pointless.
Best regards,
Attila

Tim Drayton wrote:

This is appallingly written for a legal text. I hope that substantial amounts of money are not involved here.
The words
"Attorney fees to prevailing party in any dispute"
do not create a full sentence. There is no verb, so we have no precise way of knowing what happens to the "attorney fees". Logic dictates that the losing party pays the winning party's costs, but, logic apart, there is nothing about the above wording that makes this clear.

Laura Liu wrote:

The context should be provided in the beginning.



[Edited at 2008-10-27 15:34]

Anne Goff wrote:

I agree with the previous posters-

Logically and traditionally (in the US at least) the losing party pays the attorneys fees.
Linguistically, there is nothing in the phrase that tells who pays whom.

However, I believe it is so rare for the prevailing party to pay, that if this were the case, the text would have made it blatantly clear.

With a phrase like that, the best you can do is play the odds and point it out to the client.