Local 3621, EMS Officers Union, DC-37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO v. City of New York

Background

The plaintiffs—Local 3621, EMS Officers Union, DC-37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO, Renae Mascol, and Luis Rodriguez—brought a putative class action alleging disparate treatment and disparate impact in promotions above the rank of lieutenant within the New York City Fire Department’s Emergency Medical Services Bureau. The claims were brought under federal and New York State and City human-rights laws.

This opinion concerned only the amount of attorneys’ fees and costs connected to four discovery-related motions. During class-certification discovery, the plaintiffs sought demographic data about EMS employees, including information such as names, identification numbers, gender, race, and salary, along with a legend explaining the data’s abbreviations. The court entered several orders directing the defendants to provide additional data, a witness knowledgeable about the data, and the legend.

The plaintiffs eventually moved for sanctions based on the defendants’ failure to timely provide the required information. In a July 2021 order, the court adopted Magistrate Judge Cave’s recommendation to deny an adverse-inference sanction but award reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs caused by the discovery failures. An adverse inference would have allowed the plaintiffs to argue that missing evidence supported their position. The court then addressed the amount of that award in this opinion.

Requested Fees and Legal Standard

The plaintiffs requested $148,971.73 in attorneys’ fees and $10,807.39 in expenses and costs. The court used the lodestar method, which generally calculates fees by multiplying a reasonable hourly rate by the number of reasonably spent hours. The court considered the attorneys’ experience, market rates for similar work, the complexity of the discovery issues, and whether the hours were excessive, unnecessary, or duplicative.

The plaintiffs requested hourly rates of $695 for Yetta Kurland and $650 for Erica Healey-Kagan. The defendants argued for rates of $600 and $400, respectively.

Hourly Rates

The court set Kurland’s reasonable hourly rate at $650 and Healey-Kagan’s at $425. It considered their experience in civil-rights and employment-discrimination litigation, rates awarded to them in other cases, rates awarded in similar cases, and the passage of time since earlier fee awards. The court did not treat the plaintiffs’ retainer agreement as conclusive evidence that the requested rates were reasonable.

Reasonable Hours

The plaintiffs claimed 238.75 hours of attorney time, while the defendants argued that the compensable time should be reduced to 143.25 hours. The defendants challenged time billed for work unrelated to the four motions, preparation for and work concerning Rule 30(b)(6) witnesses, preparation of the motions, legal research, and duplicative entries.

The court found that some work performed after the March 15, 2021 motion to compel was related to that motion and was compensable. Other work, including time concerning a second Rule 30(b)(6) witness and some communications with a data-management expert, was not fully compensable. The court found reasonable the time spent preparing for, conducting, and reviewing the depositions and preparing the four motions, but found 10.5 hours of legal research excessive given the motions’ legal simplicity.

The court also found it unreasonable for both attorneys to bill for attending the same court conferences and meetings with experts. Because most of the time entries were reasonable but some were not, the court imposed a 20% reduction in the hours billed by both attorneys. The opinion states that this reduction applied after certain time related to work not solely connected to the demographic-data production had already been reduced by 75% in the plaintiffs’ calculations.

Costs

The plaintiffs requested $10,807.39 in costs, including transcripts of discovery conferences and Rule 30(b)(6) depositions and legal-research expenses. The court found the transcript costs reasonable because the conferences and depositions were needed to prepare the discovery motions and determine whether the defendants had complied with court orders.

Ruling

The court granted in part and denied in part the motion for attorneys’ fees. It awarded $95,042.50 in attorneys’ fees and $10,807.39 in costs. The court ordered judgment against the defendants for those amounts, totaling $105,849.89, and directed the Clerk of Court to close the fee-motion docket entry.