Maslic v. ISM VUZEM D.O.O.

Background

The plaintiffs brought claims concerning wage violations and human trafficking involving workers transported to the United States from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Slovenia, and Croatia. The corrected first amended complaint asserted claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act, California wage-and-hour law, the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, and the California Trafficking Victims Protection Act. The court certified a class for one California wage-and-hour claim. Several defendants, including Tesla, were dismissed. The Vuzem Defendants and Eisenmann Corporation defaulted.

The court entered default judgment for the individual plaintiffs on wage claims, for Saša Maslic on behalf of the certified class in the amount of $7,013,991.86, and for the plaintiffs on the federal human-trafficking claim in amounts totaling $5,000,000 against the Vuzem Defendants and Eisenmann. The court also dismissed Gogo Rebic’s claims for failure to prosecute. The plaintiffs later moved for attorneys’ fees. The Clerk separately taxed costs of $9,790.16, so this order addressed only attorneys’ fees.

Treatment of the Vuzem Defendants’ Opposition

The Vuzem Defendants opposed the fee motion without filing a motion to set aside either the Clerk’s entry of default or the default judgment. The court concluded that they were not entitled to file that opposition under the circumstances and did not consider it. The court nevertheless independently reviewed the fee request because it had a duty to ensure that the requested fees were reasonable.

Fee Calculation

The court applied the lodestar method, which calculates a presumptively reasonable fee by multiplying reasonable hours by reasonable hourly rates. The plaintiffs requested compensation for 1,023 hours of attorney work, 1,326 hours of paralegal work, and 202 hours performed by Hunter Pyle Law.

The court denied fees for the 202 hours performed by Hunter Pyle Law because those hours were spent in a different lawsuit. The court concluded that fees for that work had to be sought in the earlier case in which the work was performed and could not be recovered in this case.

The court accepted the documentation for the hours worked by William C. Dresser and his firm’s paralegals, Andrea Anderson and Debra Lumley. It excluded 160 attorney hours and 85 paralegal hours spent litigating Tesla’s summary-judgment motion because that work concerned Maslic’s individual human-trafficking claim against Tesla and could not be recovered from the Vuzem Defendants or Eisenmann. The court therefore awarded fees for 863 attorney hours and 1,241 paralegal hours.

The court approved hourly rates of $400 for Dresser and $75 for the paralegals. The resulting lodestar was $438,275: $345,200 for attorney time and $93,075 for paralegal time. The plaintiffs did not request an adjustment to the lodestar, and the court found the lodestar amount reasonable.

Apportionment and Disposition

The court apportioned the fee award according to which defendants were involved in the work. It awarded $388,325 against the Vuzem Defendants and Eisenmann jointly and severally for work pursuing claims against both groups. It awarded an additional $26,250 against the Vuzem Defendants only, jointly and severally, for class-related motions. It awarded an additional $23,700 against Eisenmann only for settlement efforts and a motion to dismiss that did not involve the Vuzem Defendants.

The court GRANTED IN PART the plaintiffs’ motion for attorneys’ fees and awarded total attorneys’ fees of $438,275. It ordered the plaintiffs to file a proposed amended default judgment incorporating the fee award and terminated the fee motion docket entry.