You paid ten grand in legal fees for a suit that was summarily dismissed? Sounds like not only were you fleeced by the title insurance co, you were fleeced by your attourney too! Maybe there is some reasonable explanation for the high fee, but I am having trouble thinking of what it might be.
Lawyers' time isn't free, and even if you're in the right, it still takes time and money to get a judge to agree with you. South Dakota is like most states, where the expectation is that each of the parties to a lawsuit is responsible for their own costs and fees, regardless of who wins.
"Fun" coda to this story was that about 9 months into the lawsuit, the Plaintiff and his family got hit with an unrelated Federal Civil Rights lawsuit. They own a hotel a few miles from my house, and instituted a blanket ban on Native Americans on the premises, because—in their words—"you can't tell the good Indians from the bad Indians." They put this policy (and their rationale behind it) in writing, if that gives you a hint as to the sort of legal masterminds we were up against.
