New Mexico Oncology and Hematology Consultants, Ltd. v. Presbyterian Healthcare Services et al
Filing
834
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER by District Judge Martha Vazquez. In sum, in consideration of the foregoing, the Court awards Plaintiff fees in the amount of $499,335.99. (gr)
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW MEXICO
NEW MEXICO ONCOLOGY AND HEMATOLOGY
CONSULTANTS, LTD.,
Plaintiff,
v.
Civ. No. 12‐526 MV/GBW
PRESBYTERIAN HEALTHCARE SERVICES, et al.,
Defendants.
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
This matter comes before the Court pursuant to the Court’s adoption (doc. 814) of the
Magistrate Judge’s Findings and Recommended Disposition (doc. 745), thereby ordering
Defendants to pay Plaintiff 75% of the costs associated with its Motion for Sanctions
(doc. 673), Plaintiff’s Fee Affidavit seeking $629,871.23 in costs (doc. 820), and
Defendants’ Objections to Plaintiff’s Fee Affidavit (doc. 823). For the following reasons,
the Court awards Plaintiff $499,335.99.
I.
BACKGROUND
The procedural history in this case is extensive, and the Court only briefly recites
those facts relevant to the instant issue here. On November 7, 2016, Plaintiff became
concerned by Defendants’ disclosures, expressed its concern to Defendants, and began
to investigate potential discovery violations. Doc. 820 at 7.
After months of thorough review and investigation, with significant assistance from
1
experts, Plaintiff filed its Motion for Sanctions on May 17, 2017. Doc. 673. The Court
held a hearing on the Motion on July 25, 2017, and heard oral argument on August 2,
2017. Docs. 732, 736. On August 16, 2017, in his Proposed Findings and Recommended
Disposition, the Magistrate Judge recommended the following:
I find that Defendants’ negligence resulted in many of the errors in
producing ESI which caused Plaintiff to believe the instant motion to be
necessary. . . .Therefore, I recommend that Defendants be ordered to pay
Plaintiff 75% of the costs associated with its Motion for Sanctions
(doc.673),1 including all fees paid to expert witnesses to prepare reports
and testify at the motion hearing.
Id. at 34. 2
However, this total shall not include the fees and costs associated with the preparation and filing of the
motions in limine found at docs.697 and doc. 699.
2 In support, the Magistrate Judge stated,
I find that Defendants were negligent in their production of ESI in the course of litigation.
Moreover, their response to the issues raised by Plaintiff [was] inadequate to quell
Plaintiff’s justifiably rising suspicion. . . . Defendants committed the following errors in
producing ESI:
a. Defendants’ IT department failed to implement the May 2012 litigation hold on ESI. . .
and it is uncertain whether the IT department even implemented the March 2013
litigation hold at any point.
b. Defendants failed to ensure that the export process would create quality information
for use in litigation. Defendants failed to notice T Systems’s error until Plaintiff asked for
the location of an email which it believed should have been located within the Gerard
PST[.]
c. Defendants, through T Systems, likely either used a hard drive containing dirty target
media or conducted a recollection on a hard drive which contained email fragments from
a previous failed collection.
d. Defendants, through T‐Systems and Mr. Narvaez, failed to properly record the chain
of custody for the hard drives containing the server PST exports.
e. Defendants, through T Systems and Mr. Narvaez, failed to accurately describe the
collection method used to export the Gerard PST. Mr. Narvaez described a client‐side
collection, yet the logs demonstrate that he actually conducted a server‐side collection.
f. Defendants failed to discover the export logs until March 2017[,] several months after
Plaintiff began questioning the efficacy of Defendants’ expert procedures and the
existence of such logs. This delay necessitated Plaintiff’s filing of the Motion for Sanctions
without the benefit of a crucial piece of evidence.
1
2
The Court adopted the Magistrate Judge’s Proposed Findings and Recommended
Disposition, and overruled Plaintiff’s Objections thereto on February 21, 2018, doc. 756,
thereby ordering Defendants to pay Plaintiff 75% of the costs associated with its Motion
for Sanctions. Doc. 814. In response, Plaintiff filed its Fee Affidavit on June 26, 2018,
seeking $629,871.23 in costs. Doc. 820. Defendants filed their objections to Plaintiff’s
Fee affidavit on July 6, 2018, requesting that Plaintiff’s fee award be reduced to
$61,173.46. Doc. 823. The matter of the reasonableness of Plaintiff’s Fee Affidavit is now
before the Court.
II.
LEGAL STANDARD
To determine reasonable attorney fees, the Court “must arrive at a ‘lodestar’ figure
by multiplying the hours plaintiffs’ counsel reasonably spent on the litigation by a
reasonable hourly rate.” Jane L. v. Bangerter, 61 F.3d 1505, 1509 (10th Cir. 1995) (citing
Blum v. Stenson, 465 U.S. 886, 888 (1984)).3 It is Plaintiffs’ burden “to prove and establish
the reasonableness of each dollar, each hour, above zero.” Mares v. Credit Bureau of
Raton, 801 F. 2d 1197, 1210 (10th Cir. 1986).
g. Defendants collected documents from the wrong Mike West, which caused the Court
to order a second deposition of Mike West as well as additional depositions of other
employees in order to follow‐up on information gathered during the second Mike West
deposition.
Doc. 745 at 33‐34.
3
Although the lodestar framework generally applies in the statutory fee award context, courts have also
applied the lodestar calculation to determine whether attorney fees are reasonable in the context of
sanctions. See White v. Gen. Motors Corp., 908 F.2d 675, 684‐85 (10th Cir. 1990).
3
“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.” Hensley v.
Exkerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 434 (1983). The Court should, therefore, exclude hours not
“reasonably expended,” and although “[t]here is no precise rule or formula for making
these determinations[, t]he court necessarily has discretion in making this equitable
judgment.” Id. at 434‐437. Notably, “a district court does not abuse its discretion in
reducing a plaintiff’s fee request when the request is based on time records that are
rather sloppy and imprecise.” Robinson v. City of Edmond, 160 F.3d 1275, 1284‐85 (10th
Cir. 1998). However, the district court may not merely “eyeball the fee request and cut
it down by an arbitrary percentage.” Id. at 1281 (internal quotations and citations
omitted).
III.
ANALYSIS
Defendants object to Plaintiff’s fee affidavit on various grounds. Doc. 823. The
Court will address each of these objections, in turn.
A. The parameters of Plaintiff’s fee award are limited to 75% of those costs and
fees associated with Plaintiff’s Motion for Sanctions.
First, Defendants correctly highlight that Plaintiff is only entitled to recover “75% of
the costs associated with its Motion for Sanctions, including all fees paid to expert
witnesses to prepare reports and testify at the motion hearing.” Doc. 745 at 34; doc. 823
at 8. Here, even though Plaintiff only seeks to recover 75% of its attorney fees in its fee
affidavit, Plaintiff nevertheless requests reimbursement of 100% of other costs. See doc.
4
820‐7. Specifically, Plaintiff attempts to recover 100% of its costs related to contract
work performed by Sam Joseph, in the amount of $99,285.00. Id. In the same vein,
Plaintiff seeks $301,183.17 for its “other” costs, constituting 100% of the initial figure. Id.
Defendants are specifically ordered to pay Plaintiff only 75% of its fees and costs,
including those fees paid to experts. Meaning, all fees and costs that Plaintiff seeks to
recover must be reduced to 75% of their original value, regardless of their origin.
Therefore, after reducing the $99,285.00 and $301,183.17 amounts by 25%, equaling a
$24,821.25 and $75,295.79 decrease, respectively, Plaintiff may only recover, at most,
$529,754.19, prior to considering Defendants’ remaining objections, rather than the
$629,871.23 quantity that Plaintiff requests.
B. Plaintiff is entitled to fees resulting from its investigatory work, including that
performed by experts, which was precipitated by Defendants’ negligence, and
necessary to prepare its Motion for Sanctions.
Second, Defendants contend that Plaintiff may not recover fees associated with its
investigatory work, including contributions by experts, which led to its Motion for
Sanctions. Doc. 823 at 8‐11. In doing so, Defendants incorrectly conflate Plaintiff’s right
to recover fees related to its investigation of Defendants’ alleged discovery violations in
association with its Motion for Sanctions, and its right to recover fees related to
discovery, generally.
The Court held, in adopting the Magistrate Judge’s Proposed Findings and
Recommended Disposition, that Plaintiff was entitled to recover the former, but not the
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latter. See doc. 814. It determined that allowing recovery of such fees was in the
interests of justice, because Plaintiff engaged in arduous and extremely costly analysis
and research, including the hiring of experts, to investigate Defendants’ alleged
discovery violations, which it would not have performed, but for Defendants’
negligence. See doc. 747 at 99 (“I can’t imagine the undertaking [by] Mr. Sanders [of]
cross‐referencing and needing to figure out [if he was] missing complete documents. . .
And I don’t think that his concerns early on were taken particularly seriously.”).
Further, because performance of such investigatory work was essential to Plaintiff’s
discovery of the information upon which Plaintiff’s Motion for Sanctions is founded,
fees resulting from this work are undoubtedly “associated with [Plaintiff’s] Motion for
Sanctions.” Because the Court has ordered Defendant to pay Plaintiff 75% of its “costs
associated with its Motion for Sanctions,” the Court finds that it is appropriate for
Plaintiff to recover those fees arising out of pre‐drafting investigatory work related to
its Motion for Sanctions. Therefore, the Court overrules Defendants’ objection.
C. Plaintiff may not recover fees associated with its Motions in Limine or other
Motions unrelated to its Motion for Sanctions.
Third, Defendants correctly note that Plaintiff’s recovery “shall not include the fees
and costs associated with the preparation and filing of the motions in limine found at
docs. 697 and doc. 699[,]” or fees and costs related to the preparation of other motions.
Doc. 745 at 34 n.6; doc. 823 at 12‐14. However, a review of Plaintiff’s fee affidavit reveals
that Plaintiff included fees related to its Motions in Limine, research on the privilege
6
waiver issue, and its Motion to Bar Unjust Enrichment. Doc. 820‐3 at 6‐11, 39, 46‐57.
Specifically, from June 12, 2017 through July 5, 2017, attorney John Yetter billed
$17,641.50 for work related to the two Motions in Limine. Id. at 46‐50. Additionally,
Mr. Yetter billed $598.50 for time spent researching the privilege waiver, which was the
subject of a separate fee application and cannot be recovered twice. Id. at 52.
Subsequently, Mr. Yetter also billed $1,254 to “finish a draft of Reply to Motion to Bar
Unjust Enrichment.” Id. at 53. These fees, adding up to $19,494, are not recoverable as a
part of Plaintiff’s fee award.
Similarly, Plaintiff’s fee affidavit includes bills from attorney Brian Coughlin,
paralegal Juan Estrada, and associate Sukjamnjit Kaur in the amounts of $5,056, $33,
and $1,125, respectively, for work related to Plaintiff’s Motions in Limine. Id. at 6‐11, 39,
55‐57. These fees are equally unrecoverable. Consequently, combining these fees with
those quantities billed by Mr. Yetter, and performing the necessary 25% reduction,
Plaintiff improperly requests recovery of $19,281.00 in fees that fall outside the purview
of the fee award. Plaintiff’s award will be reduced accordingly.
D. Plaintiff may only recover fees that reasonably result from prudent,
responsible, and accurate billing practices.
Finally, Defendants object that Plaintiff’s recovery should be reduced, because its fee
affidavit reveals poor work and billing judgment. Doc. 823 at 14‐23. Primarily,
Defendants argue that the hours billed by Plaintiff are excessive. Id. at 15‐19. Further,
Defendants contend that Plaintiff should not recover fully for its time spent in
7
interoffice conferences, performing non‐legal tasks and traveling, or for graphics work
performed by DOAR, and excessive document review by Black Letter Discovery. Id. at
19‐23. The Court will address each of these objections individually.
First, Defendants express concern that Plaintiff billed excessive hours producing its
Motion for Sanctions, and that Plaintiff’s practice of block‐billing has aggravated this
concern. Doc. 823 at 15‐23. The Court begins by noting that a claimant is entitled to the
presumption that the lodestar amount reflects a reasonable fee. Robinson v. City of
Edmond, 160 F.3d 1275, 1281 (10th Cir. 1998). Defendants maintain that the fact that
nine individuals,4 not including experts, worked on this issue, “undoubtedly led to a
plethora of duplicative work and unnecessary billing[,]” and underscores that the
approximately 2,000 hours spent on this issue were excessive.5 Doc. 823 at 17.
The Court agrees that these bare facts, without additional context or explanation, do
suggest Plaintiff’s billing was excessive. However, the issues addressed in Plaintiff’s
Motion for Sanctions “involved neither a fact pattern easily unraveled, nor a legal
argument commonly made.” Doc. 820 at 4. And, as attorney George Sanders explains,
“efforts were not duplicative; the work was assigned as sub‐projects where doing so
was the most efficient manner of resolving the issue. . . . some lawyers focused on the
Those nine individuals include attorneys Tom Bacon, Brian Coughlin, George Sanders and John Yetter,
paralegals Danielle Gorrell, Juan Estrada, and Charmala Anderson, law clerk Sukhmanjit Kaur, and legal
contractor Sam Joseph. See doc. 820‐7.
5 As an example, Defendants state that each of Plaintiff’s lawyers “separately billed time to ‘research’
applicable law relevant to its Sanctions Motion. . . amount[ing] to $33,195.” Doc. 823 at 17.
4
8
document review while other[s] focused on the legal and technical issues. Managing
the case another way would have only caused a slower pace and negatively impacted
judicial economy.” Id. at 18. Therefore, considering the complexity of the issues and
the thousands of documents involved, the Court does not find that Plaintiff billed
excessive hours, generally.
Nevertheless, the Court recognizes the legitimacy of Defendants’ concern regarding
Plaintiff’s practice of block billing, and agrees that “the use of billing practices that
camouflage the work a lawyer does raises suspicions about whether all the work
claimed was actually accomplished.” Doc. 823 at 18 (citing Robinson, 160 F.3d at 1284).
However, Plaintiff has greatly reduced the Court’s suspicions by explaining,
[i]n such situations where billing contained work unrelated to this
Motion NMOHC’s attorneys have parsed the bills. This parsing removed
all work unrelated to the Motion, leaving only 169.90 of 444.80 potential
hours. The 274.9 hours removed constituted a 61.9% reduction of the
block‐billing. . .[and of] the 1,227.1 attorney hours submitted, those 169.9
parsed from blocked billing amount to only 13.8% of the total proposed
sanction.
Doc. 820 at 19.
Because Plaintiff reduced its block bills by 61.9% on average in the parsing process
and has repeatedly affirmed that each individual rendered estimates conservatively, the
Court does not find that a general percentage reduction is necessary to avoid excessive
billing here.
Even so, the Court distinguishes this general finding from its finding tailored to the
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block billing entries of Charmala Anderson and Juan Estrada. It appears that Ms.
Anderson and Mr. Estrada worked as paralegals at the Law Offices of George M.
Sanders (“The Sanders Firm”) during the relevant billing period, but discontinued
employment with The Sanders Firm prior to the firm’s effort to parse the block billing.
Doc. 820‐1 at 3. Defendants, correctly, contend that attorney John Yetter, who parsed
Ms. Anderson’s and Mr. Estrada’s bills based on his own estimates, cannot “reasonably
estimate the amount of time that two former paralegals spent on a particular task on
any given day more than a year ago.” Doc. 823 at 18‐19. Although Mr. Yetter states,
“[a]s part of my employment I oversee work done by paralegals, [and] I am involved in
assigning work to these employees, overseeing its completion and reviewing their
billing[,]” the Court concludes that Mr. Yetter was very occupied with the Motion for
Sanctions himself, which impeded his ability to monitor Ms. Anderson and Mr. Estrada
so closely as to identify and remember the hours they worked on a distinct issue while
they juggled several tasks. Doc. 820‐1 at 12.
Therefore, the Court does not accept that Mr. Yetter was able to accurately parse the
billing hours of other employees, long after the work was performed, and without
consulting the employees themselves. As a result, Plaintiff cannot properly recover for
those block‐billed entries made by Ms. Anderson and Mr. Estrada, constituting 15.50
hours and 29.20 hours billed at a rate of $110 per hour, respectively. Doc. 820‐1 at 12; see
Robinson, 160 F.3d at 1284‐85 (“[A] district court does not abuse its discretion in
10
reducing a plaintiff’s fee request when the request is based on time records that are. . .
imprecise.”). Therefore, after performing the necessary calculations, the Court
concludes that Plaintiff’s award shall be reduced by an additional $3,540.14.
Moving to Defendants’ second objection, Defendants contend that Plaintiff cannot
properly recover 75% of its normal rate for time spent in interoffice conferences,
performing non‐legal tasks, and for experts’ unproductive travel time. Doc. 823 at 17‐
24. “Some courts have held that routine and ministerial services, i.e., telephone
conversations, correspondence and attending meetings, should be compensated at a
lower rate than ‘truly legal services’ such as litigation, settlement negotiations, research,
and document drafting.” In re Jensen‐Farley Pictures, Inc, 47 B.R. 557, 584 (Bkrtucy. D.
Utah 1985)(internal citations and quotations omitted). However, in the circumstances of
this case and this sanction, the Court finds this “an unwarranted distinction.” Id.; see
also In re Automobile Warranty Corp., 138 B.R. 72, 78 (Bkrutcy. D. Colo. 1991). Therefore,
the Court refrains from reducing Plaintiff’s fee award based on this distinction, and
overrules this objection.
Similarly, Defendants object that certain work performed by attorneys should have
been performed by paralegals, and that such work should therefore be recovered at a
lesser rate. Doc. 823 at 20. Particularly, Defendants argue that Plaintiff should recover
at a lesser rate for certain work performed by attorneys John Yetter and Thomas Bacon.
Id. Mr. Yetter, an attorney with 21 years of experience, billed .9 hours at a rate of $285
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per hour to “format a case notebook for searchability; Send to printer in New Mexico;
Email TJB pickup instructions, address and invoice.” Doc. 820‐3 at 52. Mr. Bacon, an
attorney with five years of experience, billed 6.6 hours at a rate of $200 per hour to
“continue adding citations to court record and additional exhibits for fact section” and
“finaliz[e] all exhibits[.]” Doc. 820‐3 at 93.
The Court finds that “the allocation of responsibility between partners, associates
and paralegals with respect to most tasks is a function of many variables and that there
is no uniform approach that applies in all instances. It is an inherent part of an
attorney’s tasks to determine what types of expertise should be brought to bear on a
legal problem, and absent a clear misallocation of resources, this Court is unwilling to
second‐guess counsel’s judgment.” In re Jensen‐Farley Pictures, Inc., 47 B.R. at 584
(internal quotations and citations omitted). However, “[t]his argument does not hold
true. . . . when a firm routinely utilizes legal employees to perform tasks of a purely
non‐legal nature.” In re Automobile Warranty Corp., 138 B.R. at 78.
Therefore, the Court shall defer to counsel’s judgment regarding the hours billed by
Mr. Bacon, whose work with citations and exhibits likely required the application of his
judgment and legal skills. However, the Court will not do so regarding the time billed
by Mr. Yetter to perform the entirely non‐legal task of creating a binder, and
coordinating its printing and pickup, a clear misallocation of resources. See id. (“Non‐
legal work performed by a lawyer which could have been performed by less costly non‐
12
employees should command a lesser rate.”).
Because these tasks do not require the expertise of a lawyer, especially not the
twenty‐one years expertise possessed by Mr. Yetter, it should have been performed by a
non‐lawyer at The Sanders Firm, and billed at a lesser rate. Missouri v. Jenkins by Agyei,
491 U.S. 274, 288 n. 10 (“It is appropriate to distinguish between legal work, in the strict
sense, and….clerical work. …which can often be accomplished by non‐lawyers. Such
non‐legal work may command a lesser rate. Its dollar value is not enhanced just
because a lawyer does it.”). Therefore, the Court finds that Plaintiff should recover for
this work at a rate of $90 per hour, the lowest billing rate of any of the nine workers that
billed with The Sanders Firm. Doc. 820‐3 at 55. Therefore, after performing the
necessary calculations, the Court finds that Plaintiff’s award shall be reduced by an
additional $131.63.
On a related note, Defendants object, stating the Court should not award travel costs
to Plaintiff, because “[t]he general rule is that no compensation is due for
nonproductive time.” Doc. 823 at 22 (citing Copeland v. Marshall, 641 F.2d 880, 891 (D.C.
Cir. 1980). Aside from the fact that Copeland, a non‐binding case, fails to mention travel
time generally, or to more specifically discuss whether travel time qualifies as
“nonproductive time,” the Tenth Circuit has previously held that it is proper for an
attorney to recover travel costs at 25% of the attorney’s standard hourly rate. Smith v.
Freeman, 921 F.2d 1120, 1121‐22 (10th Cir. 1990). Here, Plaintiff only seeks to recover
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25% of the value of its attorney’s travel time, and this quantity has been reduced an
additional 25%, since Plaintiff has only been awarded recovery of 75% of its total fee.
Doc. 820 at 25; doc. 820‐7. As a result, the Court finds this recovery of travel fees to be
perfectly reasonable. Nevertheless, Defendants also contend that the Court should not
award costs to Plaintiff for its experts’ travel time. Doc. 823 at 22. Defendants provide
no precedent to support their argument that expert travel fees should not be fully
recoverable, nor has the Court found any cases directly on point to suggest that
Defendants’ argument has merit. As a result, the Court overrules this objection.
Turning to Defendants’ next objection, Defendant posits that Plaintiff is not entitled
to recover $61,821 in costs associated with its expert, DOAR, Inc.’s, creation of litigation
graphics, which were used at the sanctions hearing. Doc. 823 at 20. Defendants claim,
“[t]he excessiveness of this expense cannot be overstated,” citing to the fact that ten
individuals worked on designing the graphics, and two experts from New York
attended the sanctions hearing. Id. at 20‐21.
Although the Court agrees that these efforts were rigorous and costly, it finds that
they were vital “to explain highly technical aspects of the case in the short time frame of
the hearing.” Doc. 820 at 23. In fact, the demonstratives were so useful that the Court
thanked Plaintiff for its preparedness and requested copies of the demonstratives to be
used in its deliberation and referenced them in the argument. Doc. 820 at 23.
Considering the complexity of the relevant issues during the sanctions hearing, and the
14
effectiveness of the work performed by DOAR in explaining those issues to the Court in
a timely manner, the Court finds that such fees are not unreasonably excessive, and
therefore overrules Defendants’ objection.
In their final objection, Defendants argue that Plaintiff is not entitled to fees
associated with excessive and unnecessary document review performed by Black Letter
Discovery. Doc. 823 at 21. First, Defendants contend that Plaintiff should not recover
for these fees, because it does not establish that review performed by Black Letter
Discovery was necessary. Id. The Court disagrees. For, Plaintiff explains,
Black Letter Discovery. . . . analyzed documents to test [Plaintiff’s] claims,
created and executed searches to analyze productions for missing
information, compared the Mike West and Dr. Dava Gerard email
productions and performed quality control of the material ultimately
found by DriveSavers. Without this contribution [Defendants’] negligence
may not have been found in a timely manner, and the prosecution of the
Motion would have been nearly impossible. The use of Black Letter
Discovery served to reduce the ultimate monetary request, as their hourly
rates are less than any attorney at the Sanders Firm.
Doc. 820 at 22‐23. As a result, the Court concludes that Plaintiff has met its burden to
show that the review performed by Black Letter Discovery was reasonably necessary.
Second, Defendants argue that, even if Black Letter Discovery’s contributions
were necessary, the 830 hours that it billed are excessive. Doc. 823 at 22. In response,
the Court finds it impossible to thoroughly review Black Letter Discovery’s billing in
order to determine its reasonableness, because the only documentation provided to the
Court is a single page invoice for $39, 816.80, in which tasks are billed in blocks as large
15
as 507.5 hours. Doc. 820‐5; see Flying J Inc. v. Comdata Network, Inc., 322 F. Appx. 610, 617
(10th Cir. 2009) (Block billing is “strong evidence that a claimed amount of fees is
excessive.”). Without more, the Court cannot determine exactly what work was
performed, or whether it was performed efficiently.
Therefore, the Court reduces the fees billed by Black Letter Discovery by 25% in
order to account for potential excessiveness and vague billing practices. See Jane L. v.
Bangerter, 61 F.3d 1505, 1510 (10th Cir. 1995)(finding that the District Court’s
comprehensive 35% reduction of Plaintiffs’ recovery where “plaintiffs’ time records
include unspecified or inadequately specified ‘review’ time, excessive travel time,
unnecessary and duplicative time spent in conference calls, meetings, and hearings”
proper.); Kirsch v. Fleed Street, Ltd., 148 F.3d 149 (2nd Cir. 1998) (affirming district court’s
decision to reduce the number of billable hours by 50% for excessiveness and an
additional 20% for vague or inconsistent entries); Sata GmbH & Co. KG v. Hauber, No.
17‐0294, slip op. (N.D. Okla. Aug. 7, 2017) (reducing hours billed by 70%). Having
considered the 25% reduction already calculated by Plaintiff, the Court will reduce
Plaintiff’s award by an additional $7,465.65.
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IV.
CONCLUSION
In sum, in consideration of the foregoing, the Court awards Plaintiff fees in the
amount of $499,335.99.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
MARTHA VÁZQUEZ
United States District Judge
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