Hughes v. Benjamin
- Richard Sullivan
- 1:17-cv-06493
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 14
In Hughes v. Benjamin, Judge Sullivan granted Benjamin’s fee motion after finding Hughes’s copyright suit objectively unreasonable and awarded $38,911.89.
Carl Benjamin receives $38,785.35 in attorneys’ fees and $126.54 in costs from Akilah Hughes. The order concerns the fee consequences of Hughes’s dismissed copyright action; the ten unidentified defendants are named in the case but are not awarded fees in this order.
What happened
In Hughes v. Benjamin, Akilah Hughes sued Carl Benjamin and others, claiming Benjamin infringed her copyright by posting a video containing clips from Hughes’s video. The court had dismissed Hughes’s lawsuit after finding Benjamin’s video was protected by fair use.
Benjamin then sought attorneys’ fees and costs under the Copyright Act. Hughes argued that she believed in good faith that Benjamin had infringed her copyright, litigated reasonably, and that his crowdfunding campaign had already covered his legal expenses.
Judge Richard J. Sullivan granted Benjamin’s motion, finding Hughes’s claims objectively unreasonable and improperly motivated. The court awarded Benjamin $38,785.35 in attorneys’ fees and $126.54 in costs, totaling $38,911.89, and denied Hughes’s motion concerning Benjamin’s supplemental filing.
The detailed version
- Hughes v. Benjamin · No. 1:17-cv-06493
- Richard Sullivan
- Aug. 5, 2020
Background
Akilah Hughes sued Carl Benjamin, also known as “Sargon of Akkad,” and ten unidentified defendants for copyright infringement. Hughes alleged that Benjamin’s YouTube and Twitter posting of SJW Levels of Awareness infringed her copyright in We Thought She Would Win, a video showing Hughes at Hillary Clinton’s campaign party on election night in 2016.
Benjamin’s video used six clips from Hughes’s video, totaling one minute and fifty-eight seconds. Hughes sent YouTube a takedown notice, and YouTube disabled public access to Benjamin’s video. Benjamin sent a counter-notification asserting that his video was transformative parody, after which YouTube restored access.
In a February 3, 2020 opinion, the court dismissed Hughes’s copyright action after concluding that Benjamin’s video plainly qualified as fair use. The court found that a reasonable viewer would understand the video’s critical purpose and that the two videos generally targeted different political audiences.
Fee request and legal standard
Benjamin moved for attorneys’ fees and costs under Section 505 of the Copyright Act and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d). Section 505 permits a court to award reasonable attorneys’ fees to the prevailing party in a copyright action. The court applied the factors identified in Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc. and Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., including the losing party’s objective unreasonableness, motivation, and the need for compensation and deterrence. The court stated that objective unreasonableness receives substantial weight, but no single factor automatically determines the result.
After deciding that a fee award was appropriate, the court also had to determine whether the requested fees were reasonable. It used the usual calculation of reasonable hours multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate and reviewed the billing records and the parties’ arguments.
Court’s analysis
The court found Hughes’s copyright claims objectively unreasonable because the complaint and the videos themselves showed that Benjamin had used portions of Hughes’s work for criticism and commentary. The court emphasized that Hughes’s complaint described Benjamin’s video as mocking and discrediting her, and that the video’s title and content made its critical purpose clear. The court also relied on the different audiences for the two videos and the lack of an apparent threat to the market value of Hughes’s work.
The court further found that Hughes had an improper motive. It relied on her public statements about wanting to “bankrupt” Benjamin, interfere with his crowdfunding campaign for legal expenses, use copyright law to silence political opponents and critics, and publicize the litigation. The court concluded that her settlement offer of $46,000 did not show a reasonable effort to resolve the dispute because it came after the court had already indicated that the claim was likely subject to dismissal as fair use.
The court rejected Hughes’s argument that Benjamin’s GoFundMe campaign, which she said raised more than $120,000, prevented a fee award. The court stated that third-party financial support does not bar recovery of reasonable fees. It also found that an award could deter Hughes and others from bringing similarly abusive litigation, even if Benjamin was not personally out of pocket for the defense costs.
Amount awarded and disposition
Benjamin requested $33,419.35 for defending the copyright action, $5,366 for preparing the fee motion, and $126.54 in costs. The court found the lawyers’ hourly rates and the hours billed reasonable, including 57.5 hours by Wesley Mullen, 16.5 hours by Patrick Oh, 43.4 hours by Spencer Pearlman, and 17.2 hours by Johnny Nguyen. The court also found the billing records sufficiently detailed and approved the transcript cost.
Judge Richard J. Sullivan granted Benjamin’s motion for attorneys’ fees. The court awarded Benjamin $38,785.35 in attorneys’ fees and $126.54 in costs, for a total of $38,911.89. The opinion also states that Hughes’s motion concerning Benjamin’s supplemental letter was denied because the court did not consider or rely on either party’s supplemental letter. The Clerk was directed to terminate the motions at docket numbers 41 and 51.
Read the full 14-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.