Same Discretion To Deny Fees Entirely Is The Law In California State Court System
Two district judges from the Middle District of Pennsylvania recently denied completely two substantial attorney’s fees requests based primarily on their perceptions the requests were inflated and/or inadequately documented for purposes of evaluating reasonableness of the requests.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann considered a $727,000 request for fees in a civil rights action against teachers, principals, and administrators that settled against one teacher for $25,000 plus attorney’s fees. District Judge Brann denied the request entirely in a decision issued during the week of September 2017. He characterized the fee request as more “like an attempted bank robbery than a genuine effort to recover a reasonable fee bill.” He also criticized the requesting attorney for billing in 6-minute increments for every incoming and outgoing correspondence and for multiple vague “correspondence” entries. According to a September 12, 2017 post by Debra Cassens Weiss on the ABA Journal website, District Judge Brann observed that “[c]ivil rights cases are not get-rich-quick tickets.” He also fined the attorney $25,000 and said he would submit the matter to lawyer disciplinary authorities.
A little earlier, on August 29, 2017, U.S. District Judge Malachy E. Mannion denied in entirety what he characterized as an “astounding” $1,122,156.43 attorney’s fees, costs and interest request (with $902,655 being the fee component of the request) in an underlying uninsured motorist claim resulting in a total recovery of $125,000. (Clemens v. New York Central Mutual Fire Ins. Co., Civil Action No. 3:13-2447 (M.D. Pa. Aug. 29, 2017) [Memorandum Decision, Doc. No. 246, 100-page very detailed decision].) He found that “[a]s other courts have noted, a fee request is not the opening salvo in a back and forth negotiation with the court. The request is not the sticker price on a used car that all parties understand is the starting point for spirited dickering.” Although disturbed by the fact that the submitted time records were reconstructed, they were substantive enough to allow review. However, that was just the beginning of the assessment. District Judge Mannion was even more disturbed by these circumstances: (1) paralegal time for “file maintenance,” “file management,” “communicate,” “other,” “email – outgoing/sent,” and “legal research, ” all deemed way too vague; and (2) attorney time for “attorney review of case,” “document preparation,” unspecified “telephone conferences,” attorney “roundtables” or “conferences,” “document management,” “communicate” or “communicate-other,” “analysis/strategy,” “review/analyze,” “review documents,” “file review,” “materials review,” unspecified “legal research,” “draft/revise,” and “email correspondence, ” again found to be way too vague and not meaningful for fee request review purposes. At the end of this substantiation odyssey, District Judge Mannion concluded that about 13% “at best” of the submitted fee request was compensable. (Opn., p. 99.) Because all of this shocked his judicial perspective in general, discretion was exercised by District Judge Mannion to deny the fee request in entirety. The district judge also referred the matter to Pennsylvania’s attorney disciplinary board for determination if any further action should be undertaken.
BLOG OBSERVATION—So, what is the rule in California state courts? Answer: the same – state judges retain tremendous discretion to deny completely or reduce for inflated, vague, block-billed fee requests. The leading case in this area is authored by Justice Aronson of our local Santa Ana 4/3 DCA, namely, Christian Research Institute v. Alnor, 165 Cal.App.4th 1315 (2008), a decision which is “must” reading in cases involving reasonableness of fees issues.