Smith v. Bradley Pizza, Inc.

Background

The defendants sought reimbursement for expenses incurred in responding to Smith’s motion to compel discovery. The court had denied that motion in an earlier order, finding that Smith’s positions concerning Pamela M. Dahl’s interrogatory answers and certain discovery timing issues were not substantially justified. The court had also found that Bradley Pizza’s financial information was not relevant, but that Smith’s position on that issue was substantially justified, so expenses for that issue were not recoverable.

The earlier order also addressed the defendants’ own motion to compel. It granted in part and denied in part the defendants’ request for settlement information, granted their request for a refund of expert-witness fees prepaid for depositions of Smith’s expert, Peter Hansmeier, and granted in part their request for reasonable expert-witness fees for their expert, Julie Quarve-Peterson. The court allowed fee shifting for Smith’s refusal to pay Quarve-Peterson’s full hourly rate, but not for disputes about her travel time or preparation time.

Fee Request and Arguments

The defendants requested $3,873.50. They reported that their firm had billed $6,351.50 for work on the discovery motions and said the request reflected a reduced hourly rate and other reductions. Smith argued that the award should be no more than $984.20. Among other objections, he argued that some entries were unrelated to the fee-shifting issues, that the time spent preparing the motion to compel was excessive, and that certain fees would have been incurred even without the positions the court found unjustified.

The court used the lodestar method, which calculates a fee by multiplying reasonable hours by a reasonable hourly rate. It found reasonable hourly rates of $350 for Edward Sheu and $230 for co-counsel Linnerooth. The court determined that 17.85 combined hours were reasonably attributable to the issues for which fee shifting had been approved, producing the defendants’ requested $3,873.50 before the court’s additional reductions.

Ruling

The court found that the time billed for preparing the portion of the defendants’ motion concerning Quarve-Peterson’s full hourly rate should be reduced. It reduced Linnerooth’s October 9, 2018 entry to $500. It also reduced the request by $138 for 0.6 hours spent reviewing Smith’s deposition because the billing records did not show that the work related to a compensable issue.

The court further reduced the request by $1,225 because the defendants had not established that fees recorded on September 30, October 3, and October 30, 2018, would not have been incurred without Smith’s unjustified positions. The court rejected Smith’s remaining objections as unsupported, speculative, or unpersuasive.

Judge Katherine Menendez ordered that the defendants’ fee petition was GRANTED IN PART. Smith, his counsel, or both were ordered to pay the defendants $1,803.00 for reasonable expenses incurred in responding to Smith’s motion to compel and opposing the relevant portion of the defendants’ motion to compel.