Torres v. City of New York

Background

Lisette Torres, a New York City Police Department officer, brought employment-discrimination and retaliation claims against the City of New York. She alleged discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation and retaliation after reporting the alleged conduct to the Police Department’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity. The alleged retaliation included denial of overtime and an investigation by the Internal Affairs Bureau and a GO-15 disciplinary hearing.

The court had dismissed Torres’s discrimination and hostile-work-environment claims under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b), while allowing her to replead those claims. Discovery proceeded on her individual claims, and the parties later reached a full settlement on November 4, 2019. Their settlement allowed Torres to apply for reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(k), leaving the amount for the court to decide.

Fee Application

Torres sought $759,760.50 in attorneys’ fees and $18,014.02 in costs. Her attorneys reported 1,293.65 hours of work from the initial investigation through March 31, 2020. The proposed rates included $695 per hour for Yetta Kurland, $625 or $650 per hour for Erica Healey-Kagan, $450 per hour for junior associates, and $325 per hour for law clerks and paralegals.

The court applied the “lodestar” method, which calculates a presumptively reasonable fee by multiplying a reasonable hourly rate by the reasonable hours worked. The court found that Torres had not provided enough evidence that the proposed rates were consistent with rates charged or paid for comparable work in the Southern District of New York.

Hourly Rates

The court determined that the appropriate rates were $600 per hour for Kurland, $400 per hour for Healey-Kagan, $250 per hour for junior associates, and $100 per hour for law clerks and paralegals. The court considered the relatively straightforward nature of the case, prevailing rates for similar civil-rights and employment cases, the attorneys’ experience, and the lack of evidence supporting the requested rates.

Hours and Staffing

The court found several problems with the time records, including vague descriptions, noncontemporaneous records, duplicate entries, travel time without adequate explanations, administrative tasks billed by attorneys, excessive internal conferences, and excessive time spent on settlement language. The court also found that some work performed before the lawsuit, including approximately 42 hours spent on a Freedom of Information Law request, was not fairly attributable to the litigation. It found that some time spent preparing a required Notice of Claim was compensable but that the time claimed for that task was excessive.

To account for these problems, the court reduced the total hours by 25%. It also found that the case was staffed inefficiently because the two most senior attorneys performed approximately 69% of the work, while junior associates performed approximately 16%. The court reallocated the compensable hours so that 15% would be paid at $100 per hour, 55% at $250 per hour, 15% at $375 per hour, and 15% at $600 per hour.

Costs

The court reduced the requested costs by $820.70. It found that travel costs, meal expenses, deposition memory storage, and Federal Express charges were not adequately explained or supported by receipts. The remaining compensable costs included electronic research, court filing fees, transcript costs, and printing and copying costs.

Disposition

Katharine H. Parker awarded Torres attorneys’ fees of $289,859 and costs of $17,193.32. The opinion addresses the fee application arising from the settlement; it does not decide the underlying discrimination or retaliation claims on their merits.