Edwards v. Barclays Services Corporation
- George Daniels
- 1:19-cv-09326
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Edwards v. Barclays, Judge Daniels granted Barclays’s $7,368 fee motion and denied Edwards’s opposition.
Barclays Services Corporation received a $7,368 attorneys’ fee award. Stephen S. Edwards’s motions opposing the fees were denied.
What happened
In Edwards v. Barclays Services Corporation, Stephen S. Edwards, who represented himself, sued Barclays under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and for alleged bad faith. The court had previously dismissed his complaint for failure to state a claim.
Barclays then sought attorneys’ fees for its work on the dismissal motion. Edwards opposed the fee request and objected to a magistrate judge’s recommendation that Barclays receive fees.
Judge George B. Daniels adopted the recommendation, granted Barclays’s motion for attorneys’ fees, and awarded Barclays $7,368. The court denied Edwards’s opposing motions.
The detailed version
- Edwards v. Barclays Services Corporation · No. 1:19-cv-09326
- George Daniels
- Feb. 18, 2021
Background
Stephen S. Edwards, representing himself, sued Barclays Services Corporation, doing business as Barclays Bank Delaware, alleging violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and “bad faith.” On June 24, 2020, the court adopted Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein’s recommendation and granted Barclays’s motion to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim. The court also awarded Barclays its reasonable expenses in moving to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11.
Barclays later moved for attorneys’ fees. Edwards moved to deny the fees and filed a document that the court treated as timely objections to Magistrate Judge Gorenstein’s recommendation. The court also addressed Edwards’s requests concerning reconsideration, recusal, vacating the dismissal, remand, a jury trial, and oral argument regarding alleged fraud on the court. The opinion states that the reconsideration and oral-argument requests were denied for reasons given in earlier orders.
Court’s analysis
The court concluded that Edwards’s objections did not address the substance or legal reasoning of the recommendation and instead made conclusory arguments that repeated arguments previously rejected. The court therefore reviewed the recommendation for clear error rather than conducting a new review of the challenged issues.
The court agreed with Magistrate Judge Gorenstein that Barclays should receive $7,368 for 23.2 hours of attorneys’ work on the motion to dismiss. It found the attorneys’ hourly rates reasonable, noting that Barclays’s four attorneys had billed substantially discounted rates. It also found the hours reasonable and the invoices sufficiently detailed. Edwards did not oppose the requested hourly rates or the number of hours. The court used a $290 hourly rate for one attorney, resulting in an award $40 lower than the amount Barclays had requested.
Disposition
Judge George B. Daniels adopted Magistrate Judge Gorenstein’s Report and Recommendation in full. The court granted Barclays’s motion for attorneys’ fees and awarded Barclays $7,368. The court denied Edwards’s opposing motions, which it had considered as objections.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.