Breuninger v. T. Edward Williams
- John Cronan
- 1:20-cv-07033
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Breuinger v. Williams, Judge Lehrburger ordered Plaintiffs to pay Defendant $2,800.73 as a discovery sanction.
Richard Breuinger and ITGA, LLC must pay Defendant T. Edward Williams $2,800.73 within 30 days as their share of the discovery sanctions ordered by the court.
What happened
In Richard Breuinger and ITGA, LLC v. T. Edward Williams et al., the court reviewed Defendant Williams’s request for fees and costs after discovery sanctions were imposed over letters concerning documents on a laptop computer.
The court found Williams’s request too broad and awarded only fees for 13.1 hours of letter drafting and $33.95 in related costs. Because the earlier order required Plaintiffs to pay 50% of the approved amount, the court ordered Plaintiffs to pay Williams $2,800.73 within 30 days.
Judge Robert W. Lehrburger entered the order and directed the Clerk to close the related letter motions.
The detailed version
- Breuninger v. T. Edward Williams · No. 1:20-cv-07033
- John Cronan
- Oct. 16, 2024
Background
On September 30, 2024, the court ordered Plaintiffs to pay Defendant T. Edward Williams 50% of the reasonable fees and costs incurred in preparing certain letters. Those letters concerned Williams’s efforts to obtain financial documents from a laptop computer for which Plaintiff said he had forgotten the password. The court clarified that the September 30 order had mistakenly cited docket entry 337 instead of docket entry 298, but found that the mistake had no practical effect.
Williams submitted an affidavit seeking $28,317.75 in fees and $3,592.91 in costs. He reported 66.63 hours of work at an hourly rate of $425. Plaintiffs did not challenge the hourly rate but disputed the number of hours and the requested costs, arguing that much of the work involved tasks other than drafting the letters.
Court’s Analysis
The court found Williams’s request overly inclusive. The earlier sanctions order addressed the laptop-access issue, rather than every aspect of the dispute over allegedly missing financial documents. The court therefore allowed recovery only for time spent drafting the specified letters, not for reviewing documents, responding to Plaintiffs’ letters, preparing the fee submission, or other broader sanctions-related work.
The court approved 13.1 hours of work. At $425 per hour, those fees totaled $5,567.50. Applying the previously ordered 50% allocation, the fees owed were $2,783.75.
For costs, the court allowed $13.95 for copying 93 pages at 15 cents per page and $20 for downloading court orders and opposing letters through the PACER service. It denied costs for the discovery service and all requested online legal research because the descriptions were vague or related to broader issues and remedies that had not been awarded. The approved costs totaled $33.95, half of which was $16.98.
Ruling
Judge Robert W. Lehrburger ordered Plaintiffs to pay Williams a total sanctions award of $2,800.73 within 30 days. The court described that amount as a fair sanction for unnecessary letter practice caused by Plaintiff’s stated inability to access the laptop documents. The Clerk of Court was directed to terminate the open letter motions at docket entries 368 and 379.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.