Banks v. McGynn, Hays & Co., Inc.
- James Oetken
- 1:19-cv-05727
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Banks v. McGlynn, Hays & Co., Inc., Judge Oetken awarded $6,632.50 in fees after reducing an unreasonable request tied to Defendants’ default.
Edward Banks received an attorney’s-fee award of $6,632.50 rather than the $23,730 requested. The Defendants opposed the application and were not ordered to pay the full amount requested.
What happened
Banks v. McGlynn, Hays & Co., Inc. is an employment-discrimination case brought by Edward Banks. After Defendants failed to respond, the Clerk entered default, but the Court later excused it after defense counsel appeared, filed an answer, and requested relief from the default.
Banks sought $15,173 for work on the default-judgment motion and $8,558 for preparing the fee application. Defendants opposed the request. The Court found counsel’s $525 hourly rate unreasonable and set a reasonable rate of $350. It also found the claimed hours excessive, reducing the default-judgment hours by 50% and limiting work on the fee application to 4.5 hours.
Judge Oetken denied the requested total fee award of $23,730 but awarded Banks $6,632.50. The Court directed the Clerk to close the relevant motions, including the now-moot motion for default judgment.
The detailed version
- Banks v. McGynn, Hays & Co., Inc. · No. 1:19-cv-05727
- James Oetken
- May 8, 2020
Background
Edward Banks filed an employment-discrimination suit against McGlynn, Hays & Co., Inc. and other Defendants. The Defendants were served but did not appear or respond within the required time, so the Clerk entered default. Banks then moved for default judgment. Defense counsel later appeared, filed an answer, and asked the Court to excuse the default. After a conference, the Court excused the default and set a discovery schedule.
Banks then sought an interim attorney’s-fee award for work allegedly caused by the default. He requested $15,173 for preparing the default-judgment motion and $8,558 for preparing the fee application, for a total request of $23,730. The Defendants opposed the fee application.
Court’s Analysis
The Court used the lodestar method, which calculates a fee by multiplying a reasonable hourly rate by a reasonable number of hours. Banks’s counsel, Laurie Elene Morrison, requested an hourly rate of $525. The Court found that rate unreasonable for the principal of a small firm in the district and because the work involved the routine task of preparing a default-judgment motion. The Court determined that $350 per hour was reasonable.
Morrison claimed 28.9 hours for the default-judgment motion. The Court found that amount unreasonable because seeking a default judgment generally involves limited time and skill, and the application identified no exceptional difficulty. The Court therefore reduced those hours by 50%, allowing 14.45 hours.
Morrison also claimed 16.3 hours for preparing the fee application. The Court found that amount excessive, noting that it represented 36% of the total claimed time and that the application involved no particularly complex facts or difficult legal arguments. The Court allowed 4.5 hours for the fee application, described as no more than 24% of the total allowed time.
Disposition
The Court denied Banks’s application for the requested total fee award of $23,730. It awarded attorney’s fees of $6,632.50, calculated by multiplying 18.95 total allowed hours—14.45 hours for the default-judgment motion plus 4.5 hours for the fee application—by the $350 hourly rate. The Clerk was directed to close Docket Numbers 57, 73, and 74. The Court noted that Docket Number 57, the motion for default judgment, was moot.
Judge
The order was signed by J. Paul Oetken, United States District Judge.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.