Navcom Technology, Inc v. OKI Semiconductor America, Inc

Background

On September 5, 2019, the court granted in part OKI Electric Industry Co., Ltd.’s motion for attorney’s fees and costs and ordered the parties to meet and confer about the amount. After that process, the plaintiffs no longer contested $136,646.00 and ¥2,414,800 in fees shown in Exhibit GG. OKI also sought an additional $3,457,977.00 and ¥41,970,300 in fees shown in Exhibit FF. The plaintiffs objected to part of those additional fees and requested reductions of $1,813,051.01 and ¥28,613,836.00.

Rulings on the Objections

The court overruled nearly all objections to billing entries described as clerical work. It concluded that many entries involved attorney-level legal work and that most of the work that could have been performed by non-attorneys was billed by paralegals at lower rates. The court nevertheless agreed that three paralegal entries involving breaking down trial-related rooms and coordinating vendors could have been handled at a lower rate, and it approved the plaintiffs’ requested 75% reductions for those entries. The court also found that translating documents was reasonable in this case.

The court rejected the objection that certain work should have been assigned to less senior attorneys. It found that OKI was entitled to choose its counsel and that the fees charged by partners Labgold and Hoeffner were reasonable. The court agreed that many billing entries were too vague because they did not identify the general subject matter of the work. It applied an across-the-board 10% reduction to vague entries identified in Section J.

The court rejected the plaintiffs’ examples of allegedly excessive time, finding that the time spent on a fee motion, reviewing the case file, and preparing interrogatory responses was not shown to be unreasonable. It also rejected objections to allegedly redundant work, reasoning that the challenged expenditures were not unreasonable on their face. The court overruled the block-billing objection because the descriptions were sufficiently detailed after earlier corrections.

The court further overruled objections to fees for transitioning the case to new counsel, finding that the change occurred early in the case and could produce savings because the new lead counsel charged lower hourly rates. It also allowed fees for work seeking prejudgment interest on attorney’s fees, even though OKI did not prevail on that issue, because such work could be part of a claim on which a party ultimately prevails.

Currency Conversion and Disposition

The court ruled that neither the foreign-currency conversion rules discussed in the cited decision nor the parties’ proposed judgment-date approach directly applied. Because OKI’s fee entitlement arose from a contract governed by California law and the case was litigated in California, the court held that yen-denominated fees should be converted using the exchange rate in effect on the date of each invoice.

Judge Edward J. Davila ordered that attorney’s fees be awarded to OKI as the prevailing party as reflected in Exhibits FF and GG, subject to the reductions shown in the order’s table. The opinion does not state a single final dollar-and-yen total for the award.