A recent Law 360 story, “Shipper Fight Attys’ Fee Bod Over $1.1M FCA Settlement,” reports that two shipping affiliates urged a D.C. federal judge Tuesday to reject a whistleblower’s “highly inflated” request for about $450,000 in attorneys’ fees following a $1.1 million settlement over False Claims Act allegations that they overbilled the government for cargo-loading services on humanitarian food-aid deliveries.

Jacintoport International LLC and its parent company, Seaboard Marine Ltd., argued in an opposition motion that the amount is more than double the $215,000 that relator and shipping contractor John Raggio would receive for his role in filing the suit, and about 40 percent of what the companies would pay to the U.S.

“Almost all the work to achieve that settlement was done by government attorneys,” the motion added.  “The time sheets relator has submitted in support of his motion show that his counsel spent an unreasonable amount of hours on this case, at rates that are unreasonable.  The fee request is highly inflated.”

Opposition is the latest development in a bitter dispute that stretches back to November 2010, when Raggio filed the suit against Jacintoport, which had been operating under a 2007 U.S. Agency for International Development contract for warehousing and logistics services to store and redeliver emergency food aid.

The contract allegedly had caps on rates Jacintoport could charge ocean carriers stevedoring charges to load humanitarian food aid onto ships headed to crisis areas.  Raggio accused Jacintoport and Seaboard of overcharging carriers more for stevedoring from about January 2008 through at least October 2009.

The allegedly inflated costs were ultimately lumped into other delivery costs and passed on to the U.S. government, Raggio claimed.

Jacintoport shot back in a January 2013 motion to dismiss the suit, saying Raggio "blackmailed Jacintoport and attempted to extort it to settle another case by threatening to reveal Jacintoport's alleged stevedoring overcharges to the United States."

Jacintoport reiterated its counterclaims in Tuesday’s opposition filing.

“Such outrageous conduct constitutes a special circumstance that makes unjust any sizable attorneys’ fee award,” the motion said.  “The court should either (1) reduce relator’s attorneys’ fee award to nothing or (2) stay the resolution of relator’s fee petition until resolution of Jacintoport’s counterclaims, which seek remedies for such conduct.”

Jacintoport’s opposition papers laid out a series of other arguments why Raggio shouldn’t get a $450,000 award.  His counsel allegedly spent an unreasonable amount of time on the case, with more than one-third of the hours spent responding to Jacintoport’s counterclaims and third-party discovery requests.

The motion further claimed Raggio hasn’t detailed why the attorney rates he paid, such as $675 an hour to Tim Shea of Nemirow Hu & Shea PC, were reasonable.  Raggio also filed an unnecessary first amended complaint after the government intervened in 2012, according to Jacintoport.

Additionally, the settlement wound up to be just $1.1 million — far less than the $19.2 million Raggio had allegedly said could be awarded.

“This glaring disparity requires the court to adjust significantly any attorneys’ fee award downward to a ‘reasonable’ level,'” the motion said.

Also on Aug. 1, Jacintoport issued a statement saying U.S. District Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein had found the company did not know it was exceeding the contractual rates when the contract was actually in effect, despite government allegations of knowingly submitting false claims.  According to Jacintoport, the settlement also came with the company settling its own claims against the U.S. government alleging unpaid fumigation expenses from the contract.

The case is Raggio v. Jacintoport International LLC et al., case number 1:10-cv-01908,in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.