$3 Million in Attorneys’ Fees for Divorce Upheld : Litigation: The contentious couple battled for years over matters big and small. They did agree, though, that their lawyers’ bills violated their constitutional rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected appeals by a divorced Los Angeles couple who, after years of ferocious litigation, managed to agree on one thing--the $3 million lawyers charged to handle their breakup was much too much.

In a case with elements of the Dickens novel “Bleak House” and the film “War of the Roses,” the justices upheld a California appeals court ruling that the legal fees Stanley and Dorothy Diller were ordered to pay did not violate their rights.

The Dillers were fighting over about $15 million in net worth from a floor-covering business and many other assets, including residential and commercial property, convalescent hospitals, board-and-care facilities and medical buildings.

The state appeals court ruled in May that the Dillers were responsible for their massive legal expenses because they had haggled for years over how to divide things.

“Although the attorney fees and costs are extremely high,” the appeals court said, “the parties by their actions and conduct caused this aberration, and under the circumstances . . . the fees and costs (are) reasonable.”

The appeals court upheld a decision of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Fainer awarding substantial fees to attorneys Mark P. Robinson, who represented Stanley Diller, and Beryl Weiner, who represented Dorothy Diller.

In a lengthy opinion, Fainer lambasted the couple for their conduct during the suit.

He described Stanley Diller as “an avaricious, covetous, stubborn man” and said Dorothy Diller was “a frightened, bitter woman.”

Moreover, Fainer said, “the venality and the unrelenting bitter belligerency” of both Dillers made the case “difficult, oppressive and frustrating for the parties themselves, for their lawyers and for the court.”

Court records show that almost no item was too small to fight over and that the case could have been settled years earlier had the Dillers not been so contentious.

The Dillers, according to court records, accumulated $40 million in assets and a net worth of $10 million to $15 million.

They were married in 1955 and divorced in 1985. For nearly four years after their divorce, the couple contested the division of property in what the appeals court said threatened to become a never-ending dispute.

“If a trial could go on forever, this trial would have been a candidate for that dire distinction had not the trial judge guided and limited the proceedings,” the appeals court said.

The divorce generated a 20-volume court file that stands more than six feet high, Weiner said. There were 110 court hearings and the trial lasted 49 days. Both of the Dillers also contested claims laid to their assets by their children.

At the end of the rancorous case, Judge Fainer basically divided their holdings in half. He also rejected the claims of Dorothy Diller that her ex-husband had pilfered a valuable silver tea set--a contention that took considerable time to resolve.

Fainer said that Weiner’s firm was entitled to $785,472 and Robinson’s firm $680,525. This was on top of $980,000 that already had been paid to Weiner’s firm and $557,000 to Robinson’s firm, Weiner said Monday.

Previously, the judge had awarded $125,000 to an accounting firm for its work on the case. The couple also paid about $600,000 to lawyers who had worked on the case before Weiner and Robinson were retained.

Both Weiner, who has been practicing law for 21 years, and Robinson, who has been an attorney for 40 years, said they never had handled a case that was anywhere near this contentious. Both said that they had tried to get the case resolved swiftly but that their clients got in the way.

“These people acted out in the court system their own ‘War of the Roses,’ ” said Weiner, the third lawyer to represent Dorothy Diller, referring to the 1989 movie about a rancorous divorce. “They were both very strong-willed people who were bent on winning no matter what the cost.”

Robinson said of the divorce case, “It was like a worm you couldn’t kill. Every time you cut it with a hoe, it would wiggle away and become two worms.”

After the state appeals court upheld Fainer’s fee awards, the state Supreme Court declined to review the case.

Although divorce litigation rarely winds up before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Diller case made it because the couple alleged that their constitutional rights had been violated. They said Fainer prohibited them from using new sets of lawyers to challenge the $3 million they were billed by their attorneys in the community property battle.

Lawyers representing both Dillers contended that their clients were denied due process because Judge Fainer had not permitted them to use separate lawyers to cross-examine their trial attorneys about the fees they charged.

But lawyers for Robinson’s firm countered that the Dillers had engaged in an incessant legal battle and raised questions about the couple “curiously” joining forces to contest the fees. Weiner called the couple “extremely litigious” in urging the high court not to hear the case.

Because the appeals delayed the case further, the couple will owe their lawyers an extra $540,000 in interest, several attorneys said.