Computing the Brandt fee recovery.

When a carrier withholds benefits in bad faith, the fees spent recovering those benefits are themselves recoverable as damages under Brandt v. Superior Court. JustineAI™ is being designed so a damages facet isolates the fee component attributable to obtaining the policy benefits — distinct from the fees pursuing the tort — and models it against the engagement terms and the allocation method a court will expect. The computation will trace to the time entries, the fee agreement, and the governing authority, ready for the attorney to refine and attest.

What IB is designed to do.

1. 01

   A damages facet is being built to model the Brandt recovery — the portion of attorney fees attributable to recovering the withheld benefit — separated from fees pursuing the broader bad-faith and punitive claims a court will not award under Brandt.

2. 02

   The system is designed to read the contingency agreement and the time record together, proposing an allocation between benefit-recovery and tort work that the attorney can adjust by hand before it is used.

3. 03

   Both common allocation approaches will be modeled — a percentage-of-benefit method and a lodestar-style hours apportionment — so the attorney can choose the framing the venue and the fee agreement support.

4. 04

   Every figure is designed to trace to its inputs: the policy benefit at issue, the fee-agreement terms, and the Brandt line of authority surfaced through CourtListener-grounded citation, never a freestanding number.

5. 05

   The model produces a defensible starting computation and its provenance; the fee award is a judicial determination, and the attorney attests to every assumption before the figure informs a demand or a stipulation.

The AI reasons; the attorney decides.