A recent Law 360 story by James Mills, “Ex-DraftKings Exec’s Attys Seek $310K For Court Pingpong”, reports that lawyers for a former DraftKings Inc. executive who recently defected to rival Fanatics are seeking more than $310,000 in attorney fees, arguing the amount is reasonable and would cover their work for two "objectively unreasonable" removals of the case to federal court by DraftKings, behavior they called "disturbing litigation conduct."
Michael Hermalyn, a former vice president of growth with Massachusetts-based online sports betting company DraftKings, has sued in California to void a noncompete clause in his contract to allow him to work for California-based sports betting company Fanatics VIP. California law does not recognize noncompete agreements. However, DraftKings has twice in the past week removed the case from state court to federal court.
"DraftKings' successive, baseless removals constitute an abuse of process, undertaken for the improper purpose of preventing Mr. Hermalyn from seeking immediate relief in state court," reads the motion filed in federal court by attorneys with Munger Tolles & Olson LLP, representing Hermalyn.
"As of the filing of this brief, Mr. Hermalyn still has not had an opportunity to be heard on an application for emergency relief that he attempted to file over a week ago," the brief continues. "Meanwhile, DraftKings' removals have achieved exactly what they were designed to do — hamstring Mr. Hermalyn while DraftKings raced to file its own lawsuit, and obtain its own temporary injunction, in another forum." As a result of DraftKings removing the cases to federal court, Hermalyn's attorneys have had to scramble to respond, according to the motion.
They are asking for $193,326 in attorney fees for work connected to contesting the first removal — almost 150 hours spent by nine attorneys. They are also seeking $117,278 in attorney fees for work connected to the second removal — over 90 hours spent by eight attorneys. Hermalyn's attorneys are charging an average rate of $1,279 per hour, an amount the motion calls "squarely within the billing rates approved as reasonable by a number of Los Angeles courts." The motion notes the average Los Angeles attorney fees have been over $1,000 an hour for a decade.