LAFLAMME v. RUMFORD HOSPITAL

Filing 154

ORDER ON MOTION FOR AWARD OF ATTORNEYS FEES AND COSTS granting in part 149 Motion for Attorney Fees; granting 150 Bill of Costs By JUDGE JON D. LEVY. (akr)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MAINE
CATHERINE PRESCOTT,
Plaintiff,
v.
RUMFORD HOSPITAL,
Defendant.

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2:13-cv-00460-JDL

ORDER ON MOTION FOR AWARD OF ATTORNEY’S FEES AND COSTS
A trial was held in this case beginning on October 26, 2015, on Catherine
Prescott’s claims for unlawful discrimination, failure to accommodate, and retaliation
in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq.;
the Maine Human Rights Act (“MHRA”), 5 M.R.S. § 4551 et seq.; and the
Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. § 701 et seq. ECF No. 1. On October 29, the jury
returned a verdict in Prescott’s favor on all counts and awarded her $34,285.00 in
back pay and $1,400.00 in compensatory damages. ECF No. 123.
Prescott now seeks an award of attorney’s fees in the amount of $154,173.00,
ECF No. 149, and costs in the amount of $2,787.95, ECF No. 150. Rumford Hospital
opposes both awards. ECF No. 151. For the reasons discussed below, Prescott’s
Motion for Award of Attorney’s Fees is granted in part and her Bill of Costs is granted.
I. LEGAL STANDARD
The starting point in setting an attorney’s fee award is determining the
lodestar figure—that is, the number of hours reasonably expended to prosecute the

lawsuit multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate. Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424,
433 (1983); see also Gay Officers Action League v. Puerto Rico, 247 F.3d 288, 295 (1st
Cir. 2001). The fee applicant bears the burden of producing materials that support
the request, which should include “counsel’s contemporaneous time and billing
records, suitably detailed, and information [about] the law firm’s standard billing
rates.” Hutchinson ex. rel. Julien v. Patrick, 636 F.3d 1, 13 (1st Cir. 2011) (citations
omitted). The party opposing the fee award may submit countervailing evidence. Id.
(citing Foley v. City of Lowell, 948 F.2d 10, 20–21 (1st Cir. 1991)). The court “will
then calculate the time counsel spent on the case, subtract duplicative, unproductive,
or excessive hours, and apply prevailing rates in the community (taking into account
the qualifications, experience, and specialized competence of the attorneys
involved.”).

Id. (quoting Gay Officers Action League, 247 F.3d at 295) (internal

quotation marks omitted).
After calculating the lodestar fee, “the trial court has the discretion to adjust
the lodestar itself upwards or downwards based on several different factors, including
the results obtained, and the time and labor required for the efficacious handling of
the matter.” De Jesús Nazario v. Morris-Rodríguez, 554 F.3d 196, 207 (1st Cir. 2009)
(citing Torres–Rivera v. O’Neill–Cancel, 524 F.3d 331, 336 (1st Cir. 2008)); see also,
Hensley, 461 U.S. at 436–37.

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II. LODESTAR CALCULATION
A.

Hourly Rate
Plaintiff’s counsel are Chad Hansen and Peter Thompson, both members of the

Maine Employee Rights Group, a law firm in Portland, Maine.

They have

represented Prescott in this case since February 2013. Attorney Hansen has twelve
years of experience representing employees in employment discrimination cases, and
his hourly rate throughout the case was $300. ECF No. 149 at 9; ECF No. 149-1 at
1. Attorney Thompson has twenty-two years of experience representing employees
in employment discrimination cases, and his hourly rate throughout the case was
$350 per hour. ECF No. 149 at 9; ECF No. 149-6 at 1. The reasonableness of Attorney
Hansen’s and Attorney Thompson’s hourly rates is supported by the affidavits of
Maria Fox, an attorney in the Portland, Maine, law firm Mittel Asen, LLC (ECF No.
149-3); John Gause, a partner in the Bangor, Maine, law firm Eastern Maine Law
(ECF No. 149-4); and Jeffrey Neil Young, a partner in the Augusta, Maine, law firm
Johnson, Webbert, & Young (ECF No. 149-5).
Rumford Hospital objects to Hansen’s and Thompson’s hourly rates for two
reasons. First, relying upon Sullivan v. City of Augusta, 625 F. Supp. 2d 28, 43 (D.
Me. 2009), the Hospital argues that Prescott provided insufficient evidence to
substantiate that Hansen’s and Thompson’s $300 and $350 rates, respectively, were
actually in effect over the entire course of the litigation, when the work was performed.
ECF No. 151 at 7. Yet Prescott has submitted precisely such evidence in the form of
Hansen’s and Thompson’s contemporaneous time records, which reflect that Hansen

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billed at an hourly rate of $300 when he began work on the case in February 2013
and that Thompson billed at an hourly rate of $350 when he began working on the
case in March 2014. See ECF No. 149-2 at 1, 5.
Second, Rumford Hospital argues that Hansen’s and Thompson’s rates are
higher than what Maine-based counsel typically charge to individual plaintiffs on an
hourly basis. ECF No. 151 at 8. The sole citation in support of this argument is the
affidavit of Michael Poulin, one of Rumford Hospital’s attorneys and a partner in the
Auburn, Maine, law firm Skelton, Taintor & Abbott. Id. at 8 (citing ECF No. 151-1).
In his affidavit, Attorney Poulin states that his hourly rate in this litigation ranged
from $265 to $275; that the hourly rate of defense counsel Rebecca Webber, also a
partner at Skelton, Taintor & Abbott, ranged from $240 to $250; and that the hourly
rate of defense counsel Amy Dieterich, an associate at the same firm, was $210. ECF
No. 151-1 at 1-2.
Although relevant, I am not persuaded that, hourly rates charged by the
Hospital’s attorneys should control the rate of compensation used to determine the
plaintiff’s attorney’s fees. Attorney Poulin’s affidavit does not address what Mainebased counsel typically charge to employee-plaintiffs, as opposed to institutional
employer defendants such as Rumford Hospital. The Poulin affidavit also does not
explain the extent to which the hourly rate charged to Rumford Hospital may reflect
by an ongoing professional relationship between his law firm and the Hospital.
This court has concluded in the recent past that a $300 hourly rate for
experienced, Maine-based counsel such as Attorney Hansen is reasonable, and I

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conclude that $300 per hour is reasonable and appropriate in this case. IMS Health
Corp. v. Schneider, 901 F. Supp. 2d 172, 195 (D. Me. 2012).

I also conclude that a

higher hourly rate of $350 for Attorney Thompson is reasonable, given his greater
experience litigating employment law cases.
Prescott also seeks to collect attorney’s fees for the Maine Employee Rights
Group’s associate attorney, Allison Gray, whose hourly rate is $175; its investigator,
Barbara Lelli, whose hourly rate is $165 per hour; and its paralegal, Patricia
Rutherford, whose hourly rate is $125. ECF No. 149 at 10. Rumford Hospital does
not object to Attorney Gray’s rate. See ECF No. 151. It does, however, argue that
Rutherford’s rate is “substantially in excess of what Maine law firms charge their
clients for paralegal services[,]” relying again on Attorney Poulin’s affidavit for
support. ECF No. 151 at 8 (citing ECF No. 151-1 at 2). The Hospital also objects to
Lelli’s rate, arguing that the work she performed, as described in the time entries for
her work, was more in the nature of paralegal work. Id. at 8-9 (citing ECF No. 1492 at 6, 10, 13, 14, 15, 18, 20).
This court has accepted paralegal rates ranging from $90 to $112 as the
prevailing market rate for experienced paralegals in specialized fields such as
intellectual property. Pearson v. Astrue, 2012 WL 837243, at *1 (D. Me. Mar. 12,
2012) (discussing prior cases accepting prevailing market rates for paralegals in
copyright and patent/trademark cases). Although Rutherford’s affidavit states that
she has 22 years of experience focused on employment law, ECF No. 149-8, Prescott
offered no record evidence suggesting that the market rate for paralegal services in

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employment cases is equivalent to that for intellectual property law, see ECF No. 149.
Even if she had offered such evidence, $125 is more than the upper range previously
identified by this court. See Pearson, 2012 WL 837243, at *1. I conclude, therefore,
that a downward adjustment in Rutherford’s hourly rate is warranted. In Desena v.
Lepage, 847 F. Supp. 2d 207, 213-14 (D. Me. 2012), a three-judge panel of this court
accepted a $95 hourly rate for paralegal work and also made note of a “$100 prevailing
rate for experienced specialized paralegals[.]” Based upon this relatively recent
precedent, I set Rutherford’s hourly rate at $105, which is the specialized paralegal
rate

identified

in

Desena,

adjusted

for

inflation.

See

http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm (reflecting that $100 in 2012 is
worth $104.21 in 2016) (lasted visited on June 9, 2016). This results in a reduction
of $260 from Prescott’s fee award.
I also conclude that Lelli’s work as described in plaintiff’s counsel’s
contemporaneous time records resembles paralegal work more so than any
specialized work falling under the rubric of “investigator.” Prescott has submitted no
evidence which explains how Lelli’s work in this case was more specialized and
therefore compensable at a higher rate than paralegal work. Therefore, I also set
Lelli’s hourly rate at $105. This results in a reduction of $1,949.50 from Prescott’s
fee award.
B.

Number of Hours
Prescott contends that the hours for which she requests compensation are

supported by her attorneys’ contemporaneous time records, and that these records

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reflect the number of hours reasonably spent on the case. ECF No. 149 at 6. She
argues that her attorneys spent a substantial amount of time in the case responding
to Rumford Hospital’s “strategy of challenging Plaintiff at every stage” of the
litigation, which increased the amount of time required. Id. Prescott also asserts
that she does not seek compensation for all the time that was spent on work devoted
to her failure to hire claims, which she voluntarily dismissed in November 2014, as
reflected by certain entries in the contemporaneous time records that are marked
“NO CHARGE.” Id. at 7.
Rumford Hospital raises several objections to the number of hours for which
Prescott requests attorney’s fees, each of which is discussed below.
1.

Adequacy of the Descriptions of Plaintiff’s Counsel’s Time
Records

Rumford Hospital argues that plaintiff’s counsels’ contemporaneous time
records are insufficiently detailed, making it impossible to ascertain whether the
number of hours was unnecessary, unreasonable, or duplicative and therefore
justifying a reduction in the fee award. ECF No. 151 at 9 (citing Nkihtaqmikon v.
Bureau of Indian Affairs, 723 F. Supp. 2d 272, 289 (D. Me. 2010) (noting that a court
may “discount or disallow” hours where the “time records are too generic[.]”)). More
specifically, the Hospital objects to Attorney Thompson’s $16,870 total fees, or 48.2
hours, spent on “[t]rial prep.[,]” and contends that a more detailed description is
necessary in order to determine whether such fees can be justified, particularly in
light of what it describes as his “minimal participation at trial[.]” Id. (citing ECF No.
149-2 at 15-18).

Prescott counters that Attorney Thompson “handled the
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examinations of the majority of witnesses in this case including the examination of
each of [Rumford Hospital’s] managers[,]” and that three days of preparation before
trial and an average of four hours of preparation per day during the trial is a
reasonable amount of time. ECF No. 153 at 4 n.6. Prescott also contends that the
description “[t]rial prep.” meets the requirement that counsel identify the general
subject matter of time expenditures. Id.
I conclude that 48.2 hours to prepare to question four hostile witnesses is a
reasonable amount of time.

While the reference to “[t]rial prep.” in plaintiff’s

counsel’s contemporaneous time records is obviously lacking in detail, see Mason v.
Me. Dep’t of Corr., 387 F. Supp. 2d 57, 61 (D. Me. 2005), I will not reduce the number
of hours in light of the fact that Prescott’s reply brief presented a more detailed
explanation of these hours, ECF No. 153 at 4 n.6. I do not find fault with the
descriptions contained in the remainder of plaintiff’s counsel’s contemporaneous time
records.
2.

Alleged Duplicative Attendance at Depositions

Rumford Hospital argues that it was unnecessary for Attorney Hansen to
attend the July 30, 2014, depositions of Joette Carlton and Diane York because all
questioning was done by Attorney Thompson. ECF No. 151 at 10-11. It disputes the
5.8 hours that Attorney Hansen billed for his attendance and argues that “[c]ourts
have disallowed fees incurred for depositions in which an attorney did not actually
participate[.]” Id. (citing Weinberger v. Great N. Nekoosa Corp., 801 F. Supp. 804,
821 (D. Me. 1992)). Prescott argues that Attorney Hansen did more than merely

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attend the depositions; she asserts that he “spent time preparing for the
depositions . . . took notes, handed notes to Attorney Thompson throughout the
deposition with follow up questions . . . [and] during breaks in the deposition . . .
discussed the testimony and strategized regarding the best approach for additional
questions.” ECF No. 153 at 5 n.8.
Rumford Hospital’s citation of Weinberger is unpersuasive because the facts of
that case are not analogous to those present here. In Weinberger, the court disallowed
over $100,000 worth of deposition-related attorney’s fees because plaintiff’s counsel,
which was comprised of 16 law firms, did not ask questions in 16 of the 26 depositions
that took place and asked fewer than 15 questions in eight of the remaining ones.
Weinberger, 801 F. Supp. at 806, 820-21. Nowhere in the court’s ruling in Weinberger
is it suggested that having co-counsel appear to assist in drafting follow-up questions
or discuss testimony and strategy during breaks is wasteful and unnecessary. See id.
Rather, the court was referring more generally to the lack of participation by such a
large contingent of attorneys over the course of dozens of depositions, who
nonetheless charged a total of $127,596.73 for their time. See id. at 820. I therefore
deny Rumford Hospital’s request to disallow Attorney Hansen’s 5.8 hours.
Rumford Hospital also objects to plaintiff’s counsel having billed for 21 hours
of Lelli’s time devoted to preparing summaries of depositions taken by Attorneys
Hansen and Thompson.

ECF No. 151 at 10.

Given that electronic versions of

transcripts are searchable by keyword, I agree that this amount of time spent
summarizing the depositions is excessive and unnecessary, and I therefore reduce

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Lelli’s billed time for preparation of deposition summaries by half, to 10.5 hours. This
results in a reduction in Prescott’s fee award of $1,102.50. I also disallow 0.2 hours
of Rutherford’s time for what appears to be a duplicate entry. See ECF No. 149-2 at
5 (two entries on April 7, 2014, for 0.20 hours reflecting a letter to client with
deposition transcript). This results in a reduction of $21 from Prescott’s fee award.
3.

Motion to Amend Scheduling Order

Rumford Hospital requests that I reduce Prescott’s attorney’s fee award by
$997.50 representing the time spent by plaintiff’s counsel on her May 2014 Motion to
Amend the Scheduling Order (ECF No. 9). ECF No. 151 at 11. The Hospital claims
that, although Prescott was granted permission to take ten additional depositions as
a result of the motion, she never did. Id. Therefore, the Hospital argues, “[t]he time
spent on this motion was unnecessary and did nothing to advance the claims
eventually litigated at trial.” Id.
In light of my reduction of fees, below, to account for time spent on Prescott’s
failure to hire claims, Rumford Hospital’s request is denied.
4.

Focus Group

Rumford Hospital argues that the time spent by Attorneys Hansen and
Thompson conducting a focus group on October 23, 2015, should be disallowed as
“unnecessary and unreasonable in a straightforward case such as Plaintiff’s.” Id.
The Hospital also objects that plaintiff’s counsel’s contemporaneous time records fail
to distinguish between the focus group and other trial preparation work performed
on that day. Id. at 11 & n.2. Prescott counters that the majority of courts that have

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considered this issue have determined that time and costs associated with focus
groups are compensable. ECF No. 153 at 7 n.10 (string cite omitted).
In light of the jury’s verdict in this case, the time spent by plaintiff’s counsel
on the focus group was productive. See Trainor v. HEI Hospitality LLC, 2012 WL
119597, at *10 (D. Mass. Jan. 13, 2012), affirmed in part, vacated in part on other
grounds by Trainor v. HEI Hospitality LLC, 699 F.3d 19 (1st Cir. 2012)). I conclude,
therefore, that plaintiff’s counsel’s time in relation to the focus group is compensable.
5.

Motions in Limine

Rumford Hospital seeks to deduct approximately $3,500 from Prescott’s
attorney’s fee award to reflect the fact that only one of the four motions in limine that
she filed was successful.1 ECF No. 151 at 12. The request is denied because the
Hospital has identified no legal support for disallowing time spent on a motion
written and filed before trial that, in hindsight, proved unsuccessful or not to have
been instrumental in the outcome of the trial.

Furthermore, Rumford Hospital

understates Prescott’s success with regard to her motions in limine. While only one
of Prescott’s motions was granted, only one was denied and I reserved ruling on
Prescott’s other two motions in limine. See ECF No. 113.
Rumford Hospital also argues that the $3,500 should be deducted from
Prescott’s attorney’s fee award because, after filing a motion in limine to exclude
three defense witnesses from trial, Prescott actually put the same three witnesses on

Rumford Hospital does not allege how many hours were spent on the motions in limine, claiming
that “counsel’s block billing method makes accurate assessment of how much time was spent on these
failed motions impossible[.]” ECF No. 151 at 12 n.3.
1

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her witness list. ECF No. 151 at 12. Prescott counters that the purpose of her motion
in limine was to exclude inadmissible character and hearsay evidence from the three
witnesses, 2 but that she also listed them to testify on other issues, such as the
availability of per diem shifts. ECF No. 153 at 7 n.11.
Ultimately, neither party called any of these three witnesses at trial, with
Prescott deciding that their testimony on factual issues was not necessary. Id.; ECF
No. 151 at 12. Because the purpose of Prescott’s motion in limine was to exclude
Rumford Hospital’s reputational witnesses, ECF No. 113 at 1, ¶ 4, and because I
reserved ruling on the motion rather than denying it, I deny the Hospital’s request to
deduct attorney’s fees for time spent on the motion in limine.
C.

Requested Reduction for Results Obtained
Rumford Hospital contends that Prescott’s failure to hire claims, which were

voluntarily dismissed in November 2014, see ECF No. 38, amounted to 72 separate
claims, as they were originally presented in Prescott’s complaint to the Maine Human
Rights Commission. ECF No. 151 at 3-4. By this measure, the Hospital contends,
Prescott was successful on only “three of the 75 claims asserted in this matter—four
percent of her claims.” Id. at 13. The Hospital also argues that each of these claims
must be treated as if raised in separate complaints, and that attorney’s fees should
be disallowed for the unsuccessful claims. Id. (citing Hensley, 461 U.S. at 435).
Rumford Hospital also claims that Prescott should not recover $1,050 in attorney’s
fees for work related to the stipulations dismissing the failure to hire claims. Id.

2

The three witnesses in question were Michelle Carignan, Brenda Duguay, and Dale Gaudreau.

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Rumford Hospital’s characterization of Prescott as being successful on only
four percent of her claims seems to offer a rationale for reducing the requested fee
award by as much as 96 percent without explicitly requesting that the court do so.
See id. But this rationale depends on the Hospital’s unsupportable assertion that
Prescott’s Complaint contains 72 separate failure to hire claims. The Complaint
states a total of six claims: three counts of Unlawful Discrimination under the ADA,
MHRA, and Rehabilitation Act, respectively, and three counts of Failure to
Accommodate under the ADA, MHRA, and Rehabilitation Act, respectively. ECF No.
1 at 11-12. I interpret Prescott’s reference to “six failure to hire claims” to mean that
the failure to hire claims were pleaded as part of each individual count. ECF No. 153
at 2 n.2. Viewed in this light, Prescott’s voluntarily-dismissed failure to hire claims
do not constitute 96 percent of her claims, and a reduction of the magnitude sought
by the Hospital is not justified.
On the other hand, I am not persuaded that Prescott’s failure to hire claims
were sufficiently interconnected with her unlawful termination and reasonable
accommodation claims that a full recovery of attorney’s fees is warranted. The failure
to hire claims are factually distinct from her unlawful termination and failure to
accommodate claims insofar as Rumford Hospital rejected Prescott’s applications for
employment weeks and months after she was terminated on December 6, 2012. See
ECF No. 1 at 6-8. Moreover, based upon the parties’ Local Rule 56(h) Pre-Conference
Filing Memoranda, there was a dispute as to whether the people who were involved
in the decision to terminate Prescott were the same people who were involved in the

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decision to reject her later applications for employment. See ECF No. 27 at 4-5; ECF
No. 29 at 3, 7.
Also unpersuasive is Prescott’s representation that plaintiff’s counsel has
already omitted the fees related to the failure to hire claims. See ECF No. 153 at 3.
The total reduction in fees that is reflected by the entries marked “NO CHARGE” in
plaintiff’s counsels’ time records amounts to $3,072.50, representing 8.2 hours of
Attorney Hansen’s time and 3.5 hours of Attorney Gray’s time. See id.; ECF No. 149
at 7; ECF No. 149-2 at 1-5, 7. These hours are implausibly low, given that Prescott
litigated the failure to hire claims beginning in February 2013, shortly before she
filed her Charge of Discrimination with the Maine Human Rights Commission, see
ECF No. 149 at 1, and did not dismiss them until November 14, 2014,3 see ECF No.
153 at 3. Moreover, the descriptions accompanying each “NO CHARGE” entry do not
suggest that the work in question related exclusively to the failure to hire claims. See
ECF No. 149-2 at 1-5, 7.
Because “[t]he fee award . . . should not reimburse the plaintiff for work
performed on claims that bore no relation to the grant of relief[,]” IMS Health Corp.,
901 F. Supp. 2d at 189, a downward adjustment in Prescott’s requested fee award is
appropriate so that it reflects “only time spent in pursuit of the claim[s] on which
[Prescott] prevailed[,]” Diaz v. Jiten Hotel Mgmt., Inc., 741 F.3d 170, 179 (1st Cir.
2013). Therefore, Prescott’s attorney’s fees award is adjusted downward as follows:

Although Prescott identifies November 17, 2014, as the cut-off date for fees related to her failure to
hire claims, ECF No. 153 at 3, the docket shows that the failure to hire claims were dismissed on
November 14, 2014. In calculating the fee award, I use this latter date as the cut-off for attorney’s
fees related to Prescott’s failure to hire claims.
3

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fees for work performed between February 2013, shortly before Prescott filed her
Charge of Discrimination with the Maine Human Rights Commission, and November
14, 2014, when she voluntarily terminated her failure to hire claims, are reduced by
30 percent, 4 or $9,530.25.5 See ECF No. 149 at 1; see also ECF No. 38. There is no
downward adjustment to plaintiff’s counsels’ fees for work performed November 14,
2014 and thereafter.
D.

Bill of Costs
Prescott submitted her Bill of Costs on the court’s own form, but did not submit

a supporting memorandum as required by Local Rule 54.3.

See ECF No. 150.

Rumford Hospital objects that the Bill of Costs is deficient because it lacks this
supporting documentation. ECF No. 151 at 15-16. Because Prescott filed supporting
documentation with the Bill of Costs, ECF No. 150 at 3, the Hospital’s objection is
overruled and costs are taxed in the amount of $2,787.95.

Before reducing this amount by 30 percent, I first reduce three individual line items relating to
plaintiff’s counsels’ travel time. Although there is no “hard-and-fast rule” establishing the appropriate
billing rate for attorney travel time, “compensation for such time ordinarily is calculated at an hourly
rate lower than that which applies to the attorney’s substantive labors[.]” Hutchinson ex rel. Julien,
636 F.3d at 15. However, on two of the dates in question, plaintiff’s counsel did not separate their
travel time from the other time expended. I therefore deduct two hours from Attorney Hansen’s
October 24, 2013, entry to reflect travel time to and from the Maine Human Rights Commission in
Augusta, Maine. ECF No. 149-2 at 3. The request for $1,050 therefore is reduced to $450. See id. I
also deduct 2 hours from Attorney Thompson’s entry for March 31, 2014, to reflect travel time to and
from Lewiston. Id. at 5. Therefore, the request for $1,750 is reduced to $1,050. See id. Attorney
Hansen’s travel time on October 14, 2014, was recorded separately from the time he recorded for
depositions. Id. at 9. The total reduction in travel time is $1,300.
4

In view of this reduction, Rumford Hospital’s separate request that I deduct $1,050 from Prescott’s
fee award, ECF No. 151 at 13, is denied as moot.
5

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III. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, Prescott’s Motion for Award of Attorney’s Fees (ECF
No. 149) is GRANTED IN PART. The total award of attorney’s fees is $140,010.25,
reflecting a total downward adjustment of $14,162.75 to the requested fee, as follows6:


$1,300 deducted from attorney’s fees requested for travel time;



$1,949.50 deducted as a result of adjusting Barbara Lelli’s hourly rate
to $105;



$260 deducted as a result of adjusting Patricia Rutherford’s hourly rate
to $105;



$21 deducted as a result of a double entry by Patricia Rutherford;



$1,102.50 deducted from fees requested for Barbara Lelli’s preparation
of deposition summaries;



$9,530.25 deducted as a 30% reduction of attorney’s fees for the time
period between February 4, 2013, and November 14, 2014, to account for
the voluntary dismissal of Prescott’s failure to hire claims.

Prescott’s Bill of Costs (ECF No. 150) is GRANTED in the amount of $2,787.95.
SO ORDERED.
Dated this 17th day of June 2016.

JON D. LEVY
U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE

The sum of deductions, above, equals $14,163.25. The total downward adjustment, however, is
$14,162.75. There is a difference of 50 cents between these two figures, which is accounted for by the
fact that Prescott requested $154,173.00 in attorney’s fees while plaintiff’s counsels’ contemporaneous
time records reflect a total that is $0.50 greater, or $154,173.50.
6

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