Nikonov v. Flirt Ny Inc.
- Stewart Aaron
- 1:19-cv-07128
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 10
In Nikonov v. Flirt NY, Judge Aaron granted in part and denied in part Nikonov’s fee motion, awarding $10,828 after reducing billed hours.
Denys Nikonov received $10,828 in attorneys’ fees; Flirt NY, Inc., and the other defendants were ordered to pay that fee award.
What happened
In Nikonov v. Flirt NY, Inc., Denys Nikonov accepted Defendants’ $12,500 offer of judgment in his wage-and-hour case and then sought $36,739.25 in attorneys’ fees under federal and New York law.
The court held that accepting the offer did not prevent Nikonov from seeking fees because the federal and state laws treat costs and attorneys’ fees separately. But the court found that Nikonov achieved limited success because his discrimination claims had been dismissed and most of the damages he had sought related to those claims.
Judge Stewart D. Aaron granted in part and denied in part the fee motion, reducing the attorneys’ billed hours by 75 percent and awarding Nikonov $10,828 in fees.
The detailed version
- Nikonov v. Flirt Ny Inc. · No. 1:19-cv-07128
- Stewart Aaron
- May 6, 2022
Background
Denys Nikonov sued Flirt NY, Inc., and other defendants, asserting wage-and-hour claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and New York Labor Law (NYLL), along with disability-discrimination claims under New York State and New York City human-rights laws. After the court dismissed the discrimination claims on summary judgment, Nikonov accepted Defendants’ offer of judgment for $12,500, plus costs that had accrued. He then moved under the FLSA, NYLL, and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d) for $36,739.25 in attorneys’ fees.
Entitlement to Fees
The court determined that Nikonov was a prevailing party under the FLSA and NYLL because he had accepted an offer of judgment. Defendants argued that the offer’s reference to costs included attorneys’ fees and therefore barred Nikonov from seeking them separately. The court rejected that argument, explaining that the FLSA and NYLL treat costs and attorneys’ fees separately. Nikonov was therefore entitled to recover reasonable attorneys’ fees.
Calculation of the Award
The court calculated the fee using the lodestar method, which multiplies a reasonable hourly rate by a reasonable number of hours. It approved an hourly rate of $415 for Alexander Granovsky and $365 for Melissa Skilken. Granovsky had recorded 34.9 hours, and Skilken had recorded 78.95 hours.
The court reduced both attorneys’ hours by 75 percent. It identified Nikonov’s limited success as the most important reason for the reduction: he had sought more than $800,000 at trial, but less than $15,000 was attributed to the wage-and-hour claims, while more than $790,000 was attributed to the discrimination claims that had been dismissed. The court also noted that some billed work was administrative and that the fee application did not adequately account for the limited success.
Disposition
The court granted in part and denied in part Nikonov’s motion for attorneys’ fees. It awarded $3,623 for Granovsky’s reduced hours and $7,205 for Skilken’s reduced hours, for a total award of $10,828. The court directed that the amount be included in the judgment.
Read the full 10-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.