Shnyra v. State Street Bank and Trust Co., Inc.

Background

On November 24, 2020, the court sanctioned Ksenia Shnyra, Alexander Reyngold, Kenneth Walker, and their counsel for failing to comply with discovery obligations. The court ordered payment of State Street Bank and Trust Co., Inc.'s reasonable costs and expenses but reserved the question of the amount. State Street submitted a fee application seeking $37,119.60 in legal fees, supported by time records. Ksenia Shnyra, who was then acting without a lawyer, opposed the application and filed a later response.

Legal Standard

The court used a lodestar calculation, which multiplies a reasonable hourly rate by the reasonable number of hours worked. The court reviewed whether the claimed work was connected to the sanctionable conduct, whether the time records were sufficiently detailed, and whether the hourly rates reflected what a reasonable paying client would pay for comparable work in the Southern District of New York.

Analysis

The court found that most of State Street's claimed 66.7 hours were reasonable and that the time records were sufficiently specific. It rejected Shnyra's challenge that the records improperly combined multiple tasks because the entries were concrete enough to permit review.

The court excluded 1.8 hours for preliminary review of discovery responses because that work would have been necessary regardless of the sanctionable conduct. It also excluded 2.7 hours for work performed after briefing on the motion to compel had ended and after the court's sanctions order, because the earlier order did not authorize fees for those later discovery-related activities. The resulting compensable time was 42.6 hours for David Tauster, 15.2 hours for David Rosenthal, 2.9 hours for Michael Caputo, and 1.5 hours for Gail Rosner.

The court found the charged rates excessive for this application in some respects. It reduced Rosenthal's rate from $812 to $450 per hour, Tauster's from $476 to $400 per hour, and Rosner's paralegal rate from $248 to $100 per hour. It left Caputo's $300-per-hour rate unchanged. The court calculated a lodestar of $24,900 and found no reason to reduce or increase that amount further.

Disposition

The court ordered the plaintiffs to pay State Street Bank and Trust Co., Inc. $24,900. The plaintiffs were made jointly and severally responsible for the sanction, so each could be responsible for the entire amount. Although the earlier sanctions order had also placed responsibility on the plaintiffs' former counsel, this order imposed the payment obligation on the plaintiffs. The court noted that this did not prevent the plaintiffs from later seeking recovery of all or part of the amount from former counsel. The parties were asked to meet and discuss a payment schedule, with any disagreement to be presented to the court.