General Engineering and Technical Support Services et al v. Baltimore Gas and Electric. et al

Filing 68

MEMORANDUM OPINION. Signed by Judge Paula Xinis on 9/25/2020. (c/m 9/25/2020 - dg3s, Deputy Clerk)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MARYLAND
GENERAL ENGINEERING AND
TECHNICAL SUPPORT SERVICES, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
v.

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*
*

Civil Action No. 8:18-cv-00124-PX

BALTIMORE GAS AND ELECTRIC., et al., *
Defendants.

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MEMORANDUM OPINION

Pending before the Court is Defendants Baltimore Gas and Electric’s (“BGE”) and ICF
Consulting Group’s (“ICF”) Petition for Attorneys’ Fees and Costs. ECF No. 66. The Court
finds no hearing is necessary. See Loc. R. 105.6. For the following reasons, the Court GRANTS
Defendants’ motion.
I.

Background
On August 26, 2019, the Court granted Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment

against Plaintiffs General Engineering and Technical Support Services (“GETSS”), Herbert
Fuller, and Walter Fuller, and denied in part and granted in part Defendants’ Motion for
Sanctions. ECF No. 65. The Court also awarded Defendants attorneys’ fees and costs associated
with “preparing, filing, and attending any recorded conference in connection with (1) the
February 19, 2019 pre-motion letter (ECF No. 42) and (2) motion for sanctions (ECF No. 52).”
Id. On September 9, 2019, Defendants filed their petition for attorneys’ fees and costs, seeking a
total of $22,476.43. ECF No. 66 at 16. Specifically, they request $12,951.50 for the February
19, 2019 pre-motion letter, $6,489.50 for the motion for sanctions, $35.43 for costs associated
with the pre-motion letter and motion for sanctions, and $3,000.00 for the pending Petition for

Attorneys’ Fees and Costs. For the following reasons, the Court grants the motion and awards
$11,895.93 in fees and costs.
II.

Discussion
To assess the reasonableness of the requested fees, the Court employs the lodestar

method of ascertaining “the number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation multiplied by
a reasonable hourly rate.” Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 434 (1983); see also Robinson v.
Equifax Info. Servs., LLC, 560 F.3d 235, 243 (4th Cir. 2009). Twelve factors guide this
“reasonableness” determination: (1) the time and labor expended; (2) the novelty and difficulty
of the questions raised; (3) the skill required to properly perform the legal services rendered; (4)
the attorney’s opportunity costs in pressing the instant litigation; (5) the customary fee for like
work; (6) the attorney’s expectations at the outset of the litigation; (7) the time limitations
imposed by the client or circumstances; (8) the amount in controversy and the results obtained;
(9) the experience, reputation and ability of the attorney; (10) the undesirability of the case
within the legal community in which the suit arose; (11) the nature and length of the professional
relationship between attorney and client; and (12) attorneys’ fee awards in similar cases.
Robinson, 560 F.3d at 243–44.
This Court’s Local Rules provide presumptively reasonable hourly rates keyed to an
attorney’s years of experience. See Loc. R., App. B. As for the rates employed by each of the
attorneys who worked on the described matters, they are all within the presumptively reasonable
range. Compare Loc. R., App. B. (3) with ECF No. 66 at 10–11 (Attorney Edward Lee Isler,
with thirty years of experience and a rate of $375, falling well within the $300-475 range for
lawyers admitted to the bar for twenty years or more) and id. at 11–12 (Attorney Allison D.
Kewer, with 11 years of experience and a rate of $275, falling well within the $225-350 range

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for lawyers admitted to the bar for nine to fourteen years) and id. at 12 (Paralegal Kim M.
Jacobs, with 17 years of experience and a rate of $110, falling on the lower end of the $95-150
range for paralegals). ECF No. 66 at 10–12; ECF No. 66-8 ¶¶ 7–9.
The Court next turns to the reasonableness of the time expended as to each task for which
fees are appropriate. As other courts have noted, attorney timekeeping records remain “key to
ascertaining the number of hours reasonably spent on legal tasks” and “thus, inadequate
documentation, which may take the form of vague task entries or block billing, impedes a court’s
reasonableness review.” Two Men & A Truck/Int’l, Inc. v. A Mover Inc., 128 F. Supp. 3d 919,
925 (E.D. Va. 2015) (quoting EEOC v. Nutri/Systems Inc., 685 F. Supp. 568, 573 (E.D. Va.
1988); In re Outsidewall Tire Litig., 52 F. Supp. 3d 777, 788-89 (E.D. Va. 2014)). Where
counsel’s documentation is inadequate, “the court may reduce the award accordingly.” Hensley,
461 U.S. at 433.
1.

The Pre-Motion Letter

For preparing and submitting the February 19, 2019, pre-motion letter, Defendants seek
$12,951.50 in fees for 48.1 hours of attorney time expended. ECF Nos. 42; 66. However, a
careful review of the billing records submitted reveals that many hours were spent on tasks
beyond the scope of the sanctions imposed. For example, hours used to “[o]utline the status of
discovery and options for dealing with the upcoming close of discovery” do not fall within the
ambit of preparing the February 19, 2019, pre-motion letter. ECF Nos. 66-3. Nor does time
spent to “[c]orrespond with Plaintiffs’ counsel by email,” or “[p]repare for and teleconference
with client regarding discovery issues,” because it is not at all clear these tasks are related to the
pre-motion letter. ECF Nos. 66-3; 66-4.
Moreover, fee records reflect “block billing” entries which list multiple activities without

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delineating the time spent on each activity. See Guidry v. Clare, 442 F.Supp.2d 282, 294 (E.D.
Va. 2006) (“Inadequate documentation includes the practice of grouping, or ‘lumping,’ several
tasks together under a single entry, without specifying the amount of time spent on each
particular task.”). Courts have held that block billing entries are disfavored in attorney’s fees
award cases. Denton v. PennyMac Loan Servs., LLC, 252 F. Supp. 3d 504, 525–26 (E.D. Va.
2017).
Here, for example, the task recorded on January 30, 2019, which states “[r]eview updated
Interrogatory responses received from GETSS and identify deficiencies; draft letter to counsel
for GETSS regarding unreasonable settlement demand and discovery deficiencies” is a form of
block billing. ECF No. 66-3. Because the tasks as listed do not attribute times to each activity, it
is unclear how much time was spent on each. And “[i]t would be futile for [a] [c]ourt to attempt
to separate these ‘block entries into their constituent tasks and apportion[ ] a random amount of
time to each.’” Denton, 252 F. Supp. 3d at 526 (quoting Abusamhadaneh v. Taylor, No.
1:11CV939, 2013 WL 193778, *21 (E.D. Va. 2013)).
Having evaluated Defendants’ attorney timesheets, the Court will exercise its discretion
to reduce hours spent on tasks beyond the scope of the sanction and hours associated with block
billing, for an award of 22.3 total hours (48.1 hours – 25.8 hours). Additionally, as hours were
billed at different rates, the Court divides the reduced hours awarded as follows: Edward Lee
Isler – 0.9 hours, Alison D. Kewer – 16.5 hours, and Kim Jacobs with 4.9 hours. ECF Nos. 66-3;
66-4. The Court arrived at this calculation by subtracting from the award the hours spent on
tasks outside the scope of the pre-motion letter and those that are block billed with tasks beyond
the scope of the award. Accordingly, the Court awards $5,414 in fees associated with the PreMotion Letter. ECF Nos. 66-3; 66-4.

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2.

The Motion for Sanctions

Defendants seek a total recovery of $6,489.50 in preparing and filing their motion for
sanctions. ECF No. 42. However, a careful review of attorney timesheets reveal that many
hours were spent on tasks beyond the scope of the sanctions imposed. ECF Nos. 66-4; 66-5; 666. For example, “[u]pdate on a call with the Court and drafting Motion for Summary Judgment”
does not fall within the scope of the preparing, filing, or the attendance of any recorded
conference in connection with the motion for sanctions. Id. As further corroboration that the fee
request is over-inclusive, the Court cannot see how an additional 23 hours was needed to convert
the pre-motion letter to a formal motion to compel. This is especially so when considering that
Plaintiffs’ counsel had withdrawn by the filing of the formal motion and so Plaintiffs filed no
response. This obviated the need for a reply, yet Defendants filed one anyway. Accordingly, the
Court adjusts the award to total compensation of 16.7 hours as follows: Edward Lee Isler – 7.5
hours, Alison D. Kewer – 6.8 hours, and Kim Jacobs with 2.4 hours. At their respective rates as
discussed above the total amount for the motion for sanctions would be $4,946.50.
3.

The Petition for Attorneys’ Fees and Costs

Defendants lastly seek a lump sum of $3,000 for filing the fee petition before this Court.
To be sure, the Court views this filing as a natural extension of the Court’s order awarding
sanctions, and so Defendants are entitled to fees associated with its filing. But the Court cannot
credit that the filing required the most senior partner to spend, exclusively, “more than eight
hours” (ECF No. 62-2 ¶ 22) on a motion that was already largely completed through prior
filings. Further, Defendants have filed no contemporaneous billing records in support of this
claim. The Court views with some skepticism that none of this work could be completed by a
more junior attorney, and in any event, it begs the question as to why no contemporaneous

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billing records were submitted. See Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434; see also Robinson, LLC, 560 F.3d
at 243. Accordingly, the Court will reduce the award to $ 1,500 in recognition that certainly
work was expended to submit the pleadings, but absent support for the requested reimbursement,
the Court views this award as reasonable in light of the effort expended, the novelty of the issues,
the specific facts of the claim, and, critically, that no opposition to the motion was ever filed.
4.

Filing and Service Fees.

Finally, the $35.43 spent on filing and serving the letter and motion is clearly consistent
with the local rules and is therefore reasonable. See Loc. R., App. B. (4) (“reasonable out-ofpocket expenses [] including . . . express and overnight delivery services . . . are compensable at
actual cost”). The Court awards the fees in total.
III.

Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, Defendants’ Motion for Attorneys’ Fees is GRANTED with a

reduction of the total fees and costs requested of $10,580.50. Therefore, the final amount as
determined by the Court would equate to $11,895.93. A separate order follows.

9/25/2020

/S/
Paula Xinis
United States District Judge

Date

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