Lesnik v.Eisenmann SE

Background

Gregor Lesnik and Stjepan Papes sued numerous defendants. Their third amended complaint alleged that the Vuzem Defendants transported European laborers to the United States to work for American manufacturers for less than minimum wage and without overtime pay. By the time this order was issued, the remaining claims were minimum-wage and overtime claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act and a trafficking and coerced-labor claim under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). The remaining defendants had defaulted.

On the TVPRA claim, Judge Lucy H. Koh had denied default judgment for Lesnik, granted default judgment for Papes against ISM Vuzem d.o.o., ISM Vuzem USA, Inc., Robert Vuzem, and Ivan Vuzem, and denied default judgment for Papes against Vuzem USA, Inc. and HRID-Mont d.o.o. Papes’s default judgment was for $611,000. The only remaining issue before entry of final judgment was Papes’s request for attorneys’ fees and costs.

Fee and Expense Requests

Papes requested $254,550 in attorneys’ fees and $62,916.19 in litigation expenses under the TVPRA. The court explained that the TVPRA permits a prevailing plaintiff to recover reasonable attorneys’ fees, but does not authorize litigation expenses as part of that fee award. The court also noted that Papes had not shown that separately billing the requested expenses was the prevailing practice in the relevant legal community.

For attorneys’ fees, the court applied the lodestar method, which generally calculates fees by multiplying the reasonable hours worked by a reasonable hourly rate. Papes’s counsel requested a $400 hourly rate for attorney William C. Dresser and a $75 hourly rate for paralegal and law-clerk work. The court found both rates reasonable. It also found reasonable the 585 attorney hours and 274 paralegal and law-clerk hours attributed to Claim 9. The work included service of process, translation, factual investigation, discovery, evidence gathering, mediation, and preparation of the default-judgment motion.

Order

The court granted in part and denied in part Papes’s motion for attorneys’ fees and costs. It granted Papes’s request for attorneys’ fees and awarded him $254,550 against ISM Vuzem d.o.o., ISM Vuzem USA, Inc., Robert Vuzem, and Ivan Vuzem, jointly and severally. It denied the request for $62,916.19 in litigation expenses. The denial was expressly without prejudice to Papes’s filing a bill of costs asking the clerk to tax costs under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d)(1).

Judge Beth Labson Freeman directed Papes to file a proposed final judgment addressing all parties and claims by July 25, 2023. The order terminated the fee motion identified as ECF 618.