Gym Door Repairs, Inc. et al v. Young Equipment Sales, Inc. et al

Filing 1079

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER re: 1073 FIRST MOTION for Reconsideration Resubmitted at the direction of the Court. filed by Guardian Gym Equipment, James Petriello, Qapala Enterprises, Inc. The Court has considered all the argu ments by the parties. To the extent not specifically discussed, the remaining arguments are either moot or without merit. The motion for reconsideration is denied. The Clerk is directed to close ECF No. 1073. SO ORDERED. (Signed by Judge John G. Koeltl on 11/1/23) (yv)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
────────────────────────────────────
GYM DOOR REPAIRS, ET AL.,
Plaintiffs,
- against -

15-cv-4244 (JGK)
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND
ORDER

TOTAL GYM REPAIRS, ET AL.,
Defendant.
────────────────────────────────────
JOHN G. KOELTL, District Judge:

The defendants, Qapala Enterprises, Inc., James Petriello,
and Guardian Gym Equipment (“Guardian” or the “Guardian
Defendants”), have moved for reconsideration of this Court’s
Memorandum Opinion and Order dated September 29, 2023 (the
“Opinion”), see ECF No. 1063, that overruled the Objections to
the Report and Recommendation of Magistrate Judge Wang dated
March 31, 2023. See ECF No. 1044. In the Report and
Recommendation, the Magistrate Judge recommended, and this Court
affirmed, that the attorney’s fees requested by Guardian should
be reduced from a requested $688,286 to $56,285. See ECF No.
1044, at 23; ECF No. 1063, at 11. The Court agreed with the
Magistrate Judge that the fees sought were grossly excessive.
I.
The Guardian Defendants have now moved for reconsideration
of two points in this Court’s Opinion. See ECF Nos. 1073, 1071.
First, the Guardian Defendants claim that this Court erred in

affirming the Magistrate Judge’s decision to exclude all fees
sought for time expended after October 30, 2018. Second, the
Guardian Defendants claim that this Court erred in affirming the
Magistrate Judge’s determination of a reasonable hourly rate for
Guardian’s attorneys. Neither argument is a basis for
reconsideration.
II.
Reconsideration of a previous Opinion of the Court is an
“extraordinary remedy to be employed sparingly in the interests
of finality and conservation of scarce judicial resources.” In
re Beacon Assocs. Litig., 818 F. Supp. 2d 697, 701 (S.D.N.Y.
2011). 1 To succeed on a motion for reconsideration, the movant
carries a heavy burden. The movant must show “an intervening
change of controlling law, the availability of new evidence, or
the need to correct a clear error or prevent manifest
injustice.” Doe v. N.Y.C. Dept. of Soc. Servs., 709 F.2d 782,
789 (2d Cir. 1983). “A motion for reconsideration is not an
opportunity for making new arguments that could have been
previously advanced . . ..” Liberty Media Corp. v. Vivendi
Universal, S.A., 861 F. Supp. 2d 262, 265 (S.D.N.Y. 2012).
Moreover, “the decision to grant or deny a motion for

Unless otherwise noted, this Memorandum Opinion and Order omits
all internal alterations, citations, footnotes, and quotation
marks in quoted text.
1

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reconsideration rests within the sound discretion of the
district court.” Vincent v. Money Store, No. 3-cv-2876, 2014 WL
1673375, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. April 28, 2014).
III.
A.
The Guardian Defendants claim that this Court erred in
affirming the Magistrate Judge’s decision to exclude attorney’s
fees for time expended after October 30, 2018 because, by that
time, the Guardian Defendants had succeeded in having the claims
against them dismissed and the Magistrate Judge concluded that
the subsequent entries were substantially in connection with
obtaining a fee award and that work was not compensable. The
Guardian Defendants claim that there was work that was
compensable and point to the time entries for work on the
motions for sanctions. However, this Court correctly concluded
that the vast amount of work was in connection with obtaining
fees. See ECF No. 1063, at 10-11. The Guardian Defendants have
failed to show that the remaining work on issues such as
sanctions was substantial and related to compensable issues,
particularly in view of the unreliability of the time records
submitted by the Guardian Defendants.
B.
The Guardian Defendants also claim that this Court erred in
not overruling the Magistrate Judge’s use of a $250 hourly
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billing rate for the Guardian attorneys. The Guardian Defendants
argue that they were justified in charging a fee of about $360
per hour, and claim that this was brought to the Court’s
attention. See ECF No. 1071-1, at 12 (quoting ECF No. 998). But
this argument was made in the Guardian Defendants’ briefing
before the Magistrate Judge, see ECF No. 998, at 3-5, and not in
the Objections made to the Magistrate Judge’s Report and
Recommendation. See ECF. No. 1055, at 28. In the original
Objections to the Report and Recommendation, the Guardian
Defendants claimed that the hourly rate it sought was reasonable
and pointed to prior filings, see ECF Nos. 899, 900, 903, but
those filings did not justify the rate sought and, at most,
simply alleged that the rate charged by the Guardian Defendants
was reasonable. A motion for reconsideration is not an
opportunity to make a new argument. See Liberty Media Corp., 861
F. Supp. 2d at 265.
In any event, the $250 hourly rate was wholly reasonable in
this case. The Magistrate Judge in her Report and Recommendation
pointed out that the hourly rate charged by the attorneys for
the Total Gym co-defendant was $250 per hour and that rate was
within the reasonable rates in this District. See ECF No. 1044,
at 13-14. The Magistrate Judge had previously used that rate for
awarding attorney’s fees to the Total Gym defendant, see ECF No.
977, at 21, and it would have been unreasonable to approve a
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