Board of Trustees of the Laborers Health and Welfare Trust Fund for Northern…
Board of Trustees of the Laborers Health and Welfare Trust Fund for Northern California v. Munoz
- James Donato
- 3:22-cv-07696
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 1
In Board of Trustees v. Munoz, Judge Donato awarded the Board $5,643.45 in attorney’s fees and costs.
The Board of Trustees of the Laborers Health and Welfare Trust Fund for Northern California received a $5,643.45 judgment for attorney’s fees and costs; the order concerns defendant Arturo Solorzano Munoz, against whom the underlying default judgment was entered.
What happened
In Board of Trustees of the Laborers Health and Welfare Trust Fund for Northern California v. Arturo Solorzano Munoz, the court considered the Board’s request for attorney’s fees and costs after entering default judgment. The earlier order found that the Board could recover reasonable fees and costs under federal law but had not justified its requested hourly rate of $350.
The Board submitted additional information citing similar $350-per-hour awards for its lawyer, Ronald Richman, in other Northern District of California cases. The court was not entirely persuaded that those examples fully justified the rate, but accepted it for purposes of this case given its circumstances.
Judge Donato ordered that judgment be entered separately for the Board in the amount of $5,643.45. The opinion does not separately state how much of that amount represented attorney’s fees versus costs.
The detailed version
- Board of Trustees of the Laborers Health and Welfare Trust Fund for Northern… · No. 3:22-cv-07696
- James Donato
- Apr. 9, 2024
Background
In an earlier default judgment order, the court concluded that the Board of Trustees was entitled to recover reasonable attorney’s fees and costs under 29 U.S.C. § 1132(g)(1). The court had not accepted the Board’s support for a $350 hourly billing rate for its attorney, Ronald Richman.
Additional submission
The Board filed a supplemental statement citing attorney’s-fee awards by other courts in the Northern District of California that approved a $350 hourly rate for Richman in similar cases. The cited examples included a decision involving a laborers’ health and welfare trust fund.
Ruling
The court said it was not entirely persuaded that the additional case citations justified the requested hourly rate. Nevertheless, in light of the circumstances of this case, it accepted the $350 rate for present purposes. The court ordered that judgment be entered separately in favor of the Board for $5,643.45. The opinion does not separately allocate that amount between attorney’s fees and costs.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.