Brown v. Barnes and Noble, Inc.
- Katharine Parker
- 1:16-cv-07333
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 12
In Brown v. Barnes and Noble, Judge Parker awarded plaintiffs $25,300 in fees but denied their mailing-cost request.
Kelly Brown and Tiffany Stewart, the other plaintiffs they represent, their attorneys, and Barnes and Noble, Inc. are affected. The $25,300 award is conditional on Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil upholding the earlier discovery ruling, and the mailing-cost request was denied.
What happened
In Brown v. Barnes and Noble, Inc., the plaintiffs asked for fees and costs after the court had granted in part their request to require Barnes and Noble to produce documents in a discovery dispute. They sought $96,725 in fees and costs for overnight mailing.
The court found that the requested hours were excessive because too many partners worked on the matter, some tasks were unnecessary or not compensable, and some time records were vague. It approved lower hourly rates and reduced the compensable work to 30 hours for an associate and 10 hours for one partner on the motion, plus additional time for the fee application.
Judge Katharine H. Parker awarded $18,500 for the motion to compel and $6,800 for the fee application, for a total of $25,300. She denied the request for mailing costs and additional fees for opposing reconsideration. The award is payable only if Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil upholds the earlier discovery ruling and is to be included in the lawsuit's final judgment.
The detailed version
- Brown v. Barnes and Noble, Inc. · No. 1:16-cv-07333
- Katharine Parker
- May 14, 2020
Background
Plaintiffs Kelly Brown and Tiffany Stewart, individually and on behalf of others similarly situated, previously moved to compel Barnes and Noble, Inc. to produce documents and argued that the company had waived privilege over certain documents. The court had granted that motion in part and directed plaintiffs to apply for fees and costs connected with the motion to compel.
Plaintiffs requested $96,725 in attorneys' fees and $110.53 in costs. Their lawyers reported 155.5 hours of work at requested hourly rates of $775 for Marc S. Hepworth, $700 for Gregg I. Shavitz, $575 for Michael J. Palitz, and $525 for Rebecca Predovan. The work included preparing the motion to compel and reply, handling the discovery and privilege issues, opposing Barnes and Noble's motion for reconsideration, and preparing the fee application.
Legal standard
The court explained that a fee applicant must show that the requested rates and hours are reasonable. It used the lodestar method, which generally calculates a presumptively reasonable fee by multiplying a reasonable hourly rate by the number of reasonably spent hours. The court may exclude excessive, redundant, unnecessary, or inadequately documented time and may make an across-the-board reduction.
Reasons for reducing the request
Barnes and Noble argued that the work should have been delegated more to associates and that the application included unrelated or unnecessary work. The court agreed that the hours were “grossly excessive and inappropriate” for the motion. It found that too many partners worked on the matter, internal conferences were excessive, and some claimed time—such as work on extension and adjournment requests, certain conferences, and internal strategy memoranda—was not compensable under the earlier order. The court also found that portions of Hepworth's time records were vague or used block billing, and that Palitz spent too much time researching issues the firm had already addressed in earlier work.
The court set reasonable hourly rates of $650 for Shavitz and Hepworth, $500 for Palitz, and $450 for Predovan. It determined that Hepworth and Shavitz should receive no fees for the motion to compel, that Predovan should receive compensation for no more than 30 hours of briefing, and that Palitz should receive compensation for no more than 10 hours reviewing drafts.
Ruling
The court awarded plaintiffs $18,500 for the motion to compel: 30 hours of Predovan's time at $450 per hour and 10 hours of Palitz's time at $500 per hour. It awarded $6,800 for the fee application: 14 hours of associate time at $450 per hour and one hour of Palitz's time at $500 per hour. The court declined to award additional fees for opposing Barnes and Noble's motion for reconsideration.
The court denied plaintiffs' request for costs for overnight mailing because courtesy copies were not required. The total attorneys' fee award was $25,300. Judge Katharine H. Parker stated that the award would not be payable unless Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil upheld the earlier motion-to-compel decision, and that any payable award would be incorporated into the lawsuit's final judgment.
Read the full 12-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.