Medina v. Macomb, County of et al
Filing
28
OPINION AND ORDER REGARDING PLAINTIFF'S BILL OF COSTS 25 - Signed by Magistrate Judge Mona K. Majzoub. (LHos)
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION
JORGE MEDINA,
Plaintiff,
CIVIL ACTION NO. 16-cv-10476
v.
MAGISTRATE JUDGE MONA K. MAJZOUB
MACOMB, COUNTY OF,
ANTHONY ROMITA, and
FREDERICK PARISEK,
Defendants.
_____________________________/
OPINION AND ORDER REGARDING PLAINTIFF’S BILL OF COSTS [25]
Plaintiff initiated this action on February 9, 2016, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging
that Defendants violated his rights as secured by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the
United States Constitution by using excessive force against him, among other things. (Docket
no. 1.) In an October 11, 2017 Opinion and Order, the Court granted a Motion to Compel filed
by Plaintiff and ordered Defendants to pay the reasonable expenses and attorney’s fees that
Plaintiff incurred in bringing the Motion pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37.
(Docket no. 23.) On October 30, 2017, Plaintiff’s counsel submitted a Bill of Costs. (Docket no.
25.) With consent of the parties, this case has been referred to the undersigned to conduct all
proceedings in accordance with 28 U.S.C. § 636(c) and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 73.
(Docket no. 12.) The Court has reviewed the Bill of Costs and is now ready to rule.
I.
BACKGROUND
On October 7, 2016, Plaintiff served a set of twenty-two interrogatories upon Defendants
Romita and Parisek and a set of twenty-one interrogatories upon Defendant Macomb County.
(Docket no. 18 at 2-3; docket no. 18-1 at 1-17.) Defendants Romita and Parisek objected to and
did not answer Interrogatory nos. 8-22 on the basis that they exceeded the maximum number of
interrogatories, including discrete subparts, allowed under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
33(a)(1). (Docket no. 18 at 3; docket no. 18-1 at 26-33.) Defendant Macomb County objected to
and did not answer Interrogatory nos. 20 and 21 on the same basis. (Docket no. 18 at 3; docket
no. 18-1 at 49-50.) Plaintiff then filed a Motion to Compel, seeking a court order compelling
Defendants to answer the aforementioned interrogatories and pay the costs and attorney’s fees he
incurred in filing the Motion. (Docket no. 18.) In an October 11, 2017 Order, the Court granted
Plaintiff’s Motion and ordered Defendants to provide full and complete answers to Plaintiff’s
interrogatories and pay the reasonable expenses and attorney’s fees incurred by Plaintiff as a
result of bringing the Motion.
(Docket no. 23.)
Pursuant to the Court’s Order, Plaintiff
submitted a Bill of Costs, through which he seeks a total of $3,950.00 in attorney’s fees for 11
hours of work. (Docket no. 25.) Defendants have not filed an objection.
II.
ATTORNEY’S FEES STANDARD
Rule 37(a)(5)(A) authorizes the Court to order the payment of “the reasonable expenses
incurred [by the moving party] in making the motion, including attorney’s fees.” Fed. R. Civ. P.
37(a)(5)(A). To calculate a reasonable attorney’s fees award, courts use the “lodestar method,”
which requires the court to multiply a reasonable hourly rate by the reasonable number of hours
worked. Ellison v. Balinski, 625 F.3d 953, 960 (6th Cir. 2010). The Court “has broad discretion
to determine what constitutes a reasonable hourly rate for an attorney.” Hett v. Bryant Lafayette
and Assocs., No. 10-cv-12479, 2011 WL 740460, at *2 (E.D. Mich. Feb. 24, 2011) (Borman, J.)
(quoting Wayne v. Vill. of Sebring, 36 F.3d 517, 533 (6th Cir. 1994)). But “[a]ccording to the
law of this circuit, [the court] is required to adjust attorney fee rates to the local market rates for
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attorneys.” Swans v. City of Lansing, 65 F.Supp.2d 625, 647 (W.D. Mich. 1998) (citing Hadix v.
Johnson, 65 F.3d 532, 536 (6th Cir. 1995)). In addition, the court considers the following factors
when calculating the reasonableness of attorney’s fees: “(1) the professional standing and
experience of the attorney; (2) the skill, time and labor involved; (3) the amount in question and
the results achieved; (4) the difficulty of the case; (5) the expenses incurred; and (6) the nature
and length of the professional relationship with the client.” Miller v. Alldata Corp., 14 F. App’x
457, 468 (6th Cir. 2001).
The Supreme Court has also provided guidance:
The most useful starting point for determining the amount of a reasonable fee is
the number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation multiplied by a
reasonable hourly rate. This calculation provides an objective basis on which to
make an initial estimate of the value of a lawyer’s services. The party seeking an
award of fees should submit evidence supporting the hours worked and rates
claimed. Where the documentation of hours is inadequate, the district court may
reduce the award accordingly.
The district court also should exclude from this initial fee calculation hours that
were not “reasonably expended.” Cases may be overstaffed, and the skill and
experience of lawyers vary widely. Counsel for the prevailing party should make
a good faith effort to exclude from a fee request hours that are excessive,
redundant, or otherwise unnecessary, just as a lawyer in private practice ethically
is obligated to exclude such hours from his fee submission.
Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 433-34 (1983) (citation omitted).
III.
ANALYSIS
A.
Reasonable Number of Hours
Plaintiff’s counsel attests that Plaintiff incurred attorney’s fees in the amount of
$3,950.00 for 11 hours of work as a result of bringing the underlying Motion to Compel.
(Docket no. 25.) Specifically, Attorney Nicholas E. Backos indicates that he spent 5 hours
researching and drafting the Motion. (Id. ¶ 5.) Attorney Marcel S. Benavides indicates that he
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spent 2 hours drafting and reviewing the Motion and addressing the Joint Statement of Resolved
and Unresolved Issues; 2 hours corresponding with Defendants’ counsel; and 2 hours preparing
and drafting the instant Bill of Costs. (Id. ¶¶ 5-7; docket no. 25-1.)
In determining whether the time spent on a matter constitutes a reasonable number of
hours, the Court pays attention to whether cases are overstaffed, that is, whether the hours
expended were excessive, redundant, and unnecessary. To assure the reasonableness of the
hours expended, attorneys are to give a court sufficient detail to evaluate the fee award. See
Trustees of the Painters Union Deposit Fund v. Interior/Exterior Specialist Co., No. 05-70110,
2011 WL 204750 at *4 (E.D. Mich. Jan. 21, 2011) (Roberts, J.) (“Attorneys who seek fees have
an obligation to maintain billing time records that are sufficiently detailed to enable courts to
review the reasonableness of the hours expended on the case. The documentation offered in
support of the hours charged must be of sufficient detail and probative value to enable the court
to determine with a high degree of certainty that such hours were actually and reasonably
expended in the prosecution of the litigation. Where the documentation of hours is inadequate,
the district court may reduce the award accordingly.” (internal citations and quotations omitted)).
The Court finds that the time spent by Plaintiff’s counsel in bringing the Motion to
Compel is unreasonable. The underlying discovery matter was a routine issue regarding whether
Plaintiff’s interrogatories complied with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; it did not involve
any novel or complex issues, and a review of the correspondence between Plaintiff’s counsel and
Defendants’ counsel does not reflect that the matter was particularly contentious. Plaintiff’s
counsel asserts that the Motion was more complex and laborious than other motions to compel
because they had to individually analyze each of the interrogatories that contained subparts in
response to Defendants’ blanket objection to the number of interrogatories. (Id. ¶ 5.) But
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Plaintiff’s counsel’s “analysis” of Plaintiff’s interrogatories does not contain any profound,
individualized legal analysis.
Rather, in a rote manner, Plaintiff’s counsel describes the
information requested through each interrogatory and its subparts and then makes a conclusory
argument that the interrogatory and its subparts should be treated as one interrogatory because
the subparts are clearly subsumed within and related to the primary issue of the interrogatory.
While this three-and-a-half page section of Plaintiff’s Motion certainly took a bit of additional
time to write, it does not justify the asserted time spent by counsel in researching, drafting, and
reviewing the Motion. The Court will therefore reduce the time spent by Attorney Backos in
researching and drafting the Motion from 5 hours to a reasonable number of 3 hours. The Court
will also reduce the amount of time spent by Attorney Benavides in drafting and reviewing the
Motion and addressing the Joint Statement of Resolved and Unresolved Issues from 2 hours to 1
hour.
Next, the Court considers Attorney Benavides’s assertion that he “conservatively” spent
two hours corresponding with defense counsel through a variety of telephone calls, emails, and
mail correspondences in an attempt to resolve the discovery matter without court intervention.
(Docket no. 25 ¶ 6.) As support for this time spent, Attorney Benavides attached to the instant
Bill of Costs a one-page letter to defense counsel and one email chain in which Attorney
Benavides sent a few short emails to defense counsel. (Docket no. 25-1.) Attorney Benavides
has not, however, provided any detail regarding the telephone calls or the other correspondence
in which he engaged with defense counsel. Without having sufficient detail (other than the brief
correspondence submitted to the Court) to determine whether this time was reasonably
expended, the Court will reduce the time spent by Attorney Benavides for correspondence from
2 hours to 1.5 hours.
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B.
Reasonable Hourly Rates
“The primary concern in an attorney fee case is that the fee awarded be reasonable, that
is, one that is adequately compensatory to attract competent counsel yet which avoids producing
a windfall for lawyers.” Adcock–Ladd v. Secretary of Treasury, 227 F.3d 343, 349 (6th Cir.
2000) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). In assessing the “reasonable hourly rate,”
the court should assess the “prevailing market rates in the relevant community.” Blum v.
Stenson, 465 U.S. 886, 895 (1984). The prevailing market rate is “that rate which lawyers of
comparable skill and experience can reasonably expect to command within the venue of the court
of record.” Addock–Ladd, 227 F.3d at 350.
Attorney Benavides charges $450.00 per hour and Attorney Backos charges $250.00 per
hour, but this does not end the Court’s inquiry. Attorney Benavides has been practicing law for
over 18 years. He worked as an assistant prosecuting attorney in Oakland County, Michigan and
Cook County, Illinois for approximately 10 years; he worked as assistant corporation counsel for
the City of Chicago for two years during which he defended police officers in Section 1983 civil
rights litigation; and for the past seven years, he has worked as a solo practitioner at a law office
in Oakland County, Michigan, handling only Section 1983 plaintiff cases and criminal defense
cases. (Docket no. 25 ¶¶ 1-2; docket no. 27.) Attorney Backos has been practicing law for
approximately 6 years, is based out of Oakland County, Michigan, and his primary focus is in
criminal defense and Section 1983 cases. (Docket no. 24; docket no. 25 ¶ 4.) Both attorneys
attest to having extensive trial and motion practice experience, and Attorney Benavides also
informs that he has successfully briefed and argued in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and that
he has litigated numerous Section 1983 cases in federal court that have resulted in lucrative
settlements. (Docket no. 25 ¶¶ 2-4.) Attorneys Benavides and Backos assert that their hourly
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rates are supported by Table 7 of the State Bar of Michigan’s 2014 Economics of Law Practice
Attorney Income and Billing Rate Summary Report, which provides hourly billing rates for
attorneys by their field of practice, namely civil rights attorneys. (Id. ¶¶ 8-9.)
The Court relies on the 2017 Economics of Law Practice Attorney Income and Billing
Rate Summary Report, which was recently released by the State Bar of Michigan, is based on
2017 billing rate information, and is therefore more instructive than the 2014 Report regarding
the hourly rates charged by Plaintiff’s attorneys in this matter. The 2017 Report reveals the
following:
•
the median billing rate for a sole practitioner in Michigan, whose office is located outside
of his home is $250.00 per hour;
•
the median billing rate for attorneys with 16 to 25 years of experience in Michigan is
$253.00 per hour;
•
the median billing rate for attorneys with 6 to 10 years of experience in Michigan is
$225.00 per hour;
•
the median billing rate for attorneys in firms with one attorney in Michigan is $225.00
per hour;
•
the median billing rate for attorneys at law firms in Oakland County, Michigan, south of
M-59, is $275.00 per hour;
•
the median billing rate for attorneys practicing civil rights law in Michigan is $288.00 per
hour; and
•
the median billing rate for attorneys practicing in Wayne County, Michigan, or Oakland
County, Michigan, is $250.00 per hour.
See 2017 Economics of Law Practice Attorney Income and Billing Rate Summary Report, State
Bar
of
Michigan
(January
2018),
available
at
https://www.michbar.org/file/pmrc/articles/0000153.pdf. Thus, it appears that a rate between
$225.00 per hour and $288.00 per hour is reasonable for Attorneys Backos and Benavides.
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The $250.00 hourly rate charged by Attorney Backos falls within this range and is
therefore reasonable. The $450.00 hourly rate charged by Attorney Benavides, however, falls
outside of this range and is on the very high end of the reported hourly rates charged by sole
practitioners with 18 years of experience practicing civil-rights law in the metro-Detroit area.
See id. Attorney Benavides’s 18 years of experience certainly warrants a higher hourly rate than
Attorney Backos’s 6 years of experience. And considering Attorney Benavides’s extensive and
diverse substantive experience, an upward adjustment from the median hourly rate seems
appropriate. Nevertheless, Attorney Benavides has provided nothing to suggest that he should be
afforded an hourly rate that is $200.00 greater than the median rate in the local market. And, as
discussed above, this was a reasonably simple discovery matter that did not require extensive
legal research or analysis and was not particularly contentious. Having considered Attorney
Benavides’s experience; the skill, time, and labor involved; the amount in question and the
results achieved; and the difficulty of the Motion at hand; the Court finds that Attorney
Benavides’s reasonably hourly rate is $300.00 per hour. 1 Therefore, the Court will afford
Attorney Backos a reasonable hourly rate of $250.00 per hour and Attorney Benavides a
reasonable hourly rate of $300.00 per hour.
C.
Lodestar Calculation
Based on the above analysis, the Lodestar calculation is as follows:
Attorney Backos: 3 hours x $250.00 per hour = $750.00
Attorney Benavides: 4.5 hours x $300.00 per hour = $1,350.00
Total Attorney’s Fees: $2,100.00.
1
Plaintiff provided no relevant information with regard to the nature of Attorney Benavides’s professional
relationship with Plaintiff.
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IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that Plaintiff is awarded attorney’s fees in the amount
of $2,100.00, payable to Plaintiff’s counsel by Defendants or Defendants’ counsel within twentyone (21) days of this Opinion and Order.
Dated: March 14, 2018
s/ Mona K. Majzoub
MONA K. MAJZOUB
UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
PROOF OF SERVICE
I hereby certify that a copy of this Opinion and Order was served upon counsel of record
on this date.
Dated: March 14, 2018
s/ Leanne Hosking
Case Manager
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