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Texas High Court: Detailed Evidence Needed to Prove Attorney Fees

June 24, 2019 | Posted in : Billing Practices, Billing Record / Entries, Fee Award, Fee Issues on Appeal, Fee Jurisprudence, Fee Shifting, Fees as Sanctions, Prevailing Party Issues

A recent Texas Lawyer story by Angela Morris, “Detailed Evidence Needed to Prove Attorney Fee Award as Sanction High Court Rules,” reports that even when a litigant is sanctioned for filing a frivolous lawsuit and ordered to pay the opposing parties’ attorney fees, trial courts still need detailed evidence to rule on how much of the fee was reasonable, according to a recent Texas Supreme Court ruling.  The June 21 opinion in Nath v. Texas Children’s Hospital follows a chain of cases in recent years that blasted lawyers’ fee awards when the only thing to back them up was testimony and affidavits.  The justices have strongly urged attorneys to provide courts with detailed billing records when they’re proving attorney fee awards.

What’s new about Nath is that the state Supreme Court made it clear that the same evidence is required when fees are awarded as sanctions.  “All fee-shifting situations require reasonableness,” the opinion said.  “Before a court may exercise its discretion to shift attorney’s fees as a sanction, there must be some evidence of reasonableness because without such proof a trial court cannot determine that the sanction is ‘no more severe than necessary’ to fairly compensate the prevailing party.”

The ruling means that Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine must return to the trial court to provide better evidence to back up a $1.4 million attorney fee award that they won as sanctions after petitioner Rahul Nath filed a frivolous lawsuit against them. 

The Supreme Court’s docket shows that Texas Children’s attorneys were Vinson & Elkins partner Pat Mizell, counsel Stacy Vu and Cathy Smith, and Copeland & Rice partner Russell Gips.  The opinion noted their fees totaled $726,000.  Meanwhile, Baylor’s fees were $644,500.  Its attorneys were Norton Rose Fulbright partners Joy Soloway and Shauna Clark, senior associate Jamila Mensah and senior counsel Jaclyn Caugherty, and Edward “Teddy” Adams Jr., vice president of litigation for Crown Castle International.