Clements v. Ivory
- Martinez-Olguin
- 3:24-cv-04601
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Clements v. Ivory, Judge Martinez-Olguin granted in part Clements’s fee motion, awarding $9,021 for improper removal attempts.
George Bernard Clements, Jr. received an award of $9,021.00 from the fee motion; Milous James Ivory was ordered to pay that amount as fees incurred because of the improper removal attempts.
What happened
In Clements v. Ivory, George Bernard Clements, Jr. asked the court to award $20,650.33 in attorney’s fees and expenses connected to Milous James Ivory’s three unsuccessful attempts to move the case from state court to federal court.
Clements’s earlier fee motion had been denied without prejudice because it did not follow local procedural requirements. The court found that the new motion corrected those problems and that the invoices were detailed enough to evaluate the work. Ivory argued that the invoices were improperly combined into broad time entries.
Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin granted the motion in part and awarded Clements $9,021.00 for work related to the improper removals. The court declined to award amounts tied to a state-court summary-judgment motion or to anticipated work for reviewing an opposition and attending a hearing that was later canceled.
The detailed version
- Clements v. Ivory · No. 3:24-cv-04601
- Martinez-Olguin
- Feb. 18, 2025
Background
George Bernard Clements, Jr. moved for $20,650.33 in attorney’s fees and expenses under 28 U.S.C. § 1447(c), based on Milous James Ivory’s three failed attempts to remove the case to federal court. That statute allows a remand order to require payment of costs and actual expenses, including attorney’s fees, caused by removal. The court had previously described Ivory’s repeated removals on the same basis as a tactic to delay proceedings in state court.
Clements’s first fee motion was denied without prejudice because it did not satisfy Civil Local Rule 54-5. The court found that the current motion cured those defects. Clements’s counsel stated that counsel made a good-faith effort to confer with Ivory about the fee dispute, and the motion included information about the services performed, time spent, recordkeeping, invoices, and fees.
Analysis
Clements requested $17,395.33 for fees and expenses related to the three removal attempts, including preparing filings and hearings at an hourly rate of $465 and paying filing fees. Ivory argued that the invoices were improperly “block billed,” meaning they combined multiple tasks into broad entries. The court rejected that argument, finding the invoices sufficiently itemized to determine how much time was spent on particular activities.
After reviewing the invoices, however, the court found that only $9,021.00 was incurred for work related to the improper removals. That amount included researching and drafting the motion to remand and preparing Clements’s first fee motion. The court declined to award the remaining requested fees and costs because they appeared to concern a summary-judgment motion filed in state court, and Clements provided no authority allowing the federal court to award those amounts or a basis for assessing their reasonableness.
Clements also requested $3,255 for seven hours of anticipated work reviewing an opposition and preparing for and attending the fee-motion hearing. Because the court vacated the hearing, it declined to award those anticipated fees.
Disposition
The court GRANTED IN PART Clements’s motion for attorney’s fees and found that Clements was entitled to $9,021.00 in fees incurred because of Ivory’s three improper removal attempts.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.