A recent Law.com by Riley Brennan, “Nearly $700K in Attorney Fees and Costs Awarded Following $8M Judgment in Wrongful Incarceration Case,” reports that, following an $8 million civil rights judgment his favor, a former Massachusetts prisoner and his Chicago-based counsel were awarded an additional $743,395.87 in attorney fees and costs. U.S. District Judge Timothy S. Hillman of the District of Massachusetts partially granted and partially denied a former prisoner’s motion for attorney fees and costs, awarding the plaintiff $675,194.88 in fees and $68,200.99 in costs in an April 7 opinion.
The case originated from plaintiff Natale Cosenza’s Section 1983 action, which alleged constitutional claims against various defendants, including the city of Worcester and multiple Worcester police officers, “stemming from his conviction and 16-year incarceration for armed burglary.”
A jury ultimately found two of the defendants—Kerry Hazelhurst and John Doherty—liable for violations of plaintiff’s civil rights and awarded $8 million in compensatory damages and $30,000 in punitive damages. Cosenza then moved for the awarding of attorney fees and costs, with defendants arguing against the proposed rates, billing, hours, and costs. Hillman determined that most of the billing was appropriate, with the majority of the plaintiff’s attorneys’ rates being reasonably allocated. However, there were three exceptions.
According to Hillman, “three partners spent a significant amount of time drafting motions, work that is typically done by associates and reviewed by partners. Those three partners will be reimbursed at the mid-level associate rate of $300 for those hours. Similarly, work on the ministerial portions of fee petitions is reimbursed at a reasonable paralegal rate of $100 an hour.”
Further, Hillman determined from the three attorneys’ descriptions that “only one described their work as legal,” and thus only that attorney’s hours should be “reimbursed at the associate rate, as there are substantive legal issues raised in the fee petition. The other attorneys will be reimbursed at a paralegal rate for those hours.”
Plaintiff’s also requested for reimbursement of the services of an investigator, which defendants argued against, finding “that there should be no reimbursement for the services of an investigator where the case ultimately turned on the evidentiary record from the original criminal case.” However, the court didn’t agree.
According to Hillman, the defendants failed to cite any case law for their argument. Additionally, it did not strike the court as “unreasonable to hire an investigator in a case where the plaintiff’s allegations were that the police lied and destroyed evidence, even if the plaintiff is unable to point to a specific piece of evidence the investigator discovered that was introduced at trial.” Thus the court, in factoring the investigator’s travel costs to serve defendants and conduct her investigation, determined $100 an hour was a reasonable rate.
In terms of the plaintiff’s counsel’s hours, defendants argued that the case was severely overstaffed, and that two attorneys would have been sufficient. According to the court, this assertion was on the theory that the case as the case was defended by two attorneys, two attorneys was sufficient for plaintiffs.
“First, reasonable staffing for bringing and prosecuting a civil rights case is not identical to reasonable staffing for defending a civil rights case. Apart from the normal burden of proof the plaintiffs must shoulder, they must overcome qualified immunity and evidentiary hurdles. But more importantly, the defendants’ objection to facing down 11 opposing attorneys is misleading,” said Hillman.
Hillman disagreed with the defendants’ assertion, highlighting that five of the total eleven attorneys requested minimal hours. The remaining attorneys, that requested substantial hours, “were split into pre-trial and trial teams of three attorneys each. Thus, at any given time in the litigation, plaintiff had three counsel and defendants had two—given the structural differences noted above, not an unreasonable staffing discrepancy.”
A similar structure was set up amongst the counsel’s paralegals, leading the court to conclude that a reduction for overstaffing was not warranted. The court also rejected the defendants’ argument “that because their counsel worked 536 hours between May 4, 2022, and February 13, 2023, and the plaintiff’s counsel worked 770 hours during that time period, the time spent by defendants’ counsel is reasonable and a 30% reduction is in order.”
“Defendants cite no case law to support this position, which would allow an across-the-board reduction for a discrepancy in hours that is not even reflective of the total time spent on the case nor, in the court’s view, particularly egregious,” said Hillman. “The relevance of that time period is also unclear to this court. This court does not find a reduction for overbilling warranted on that ground.”
Defendants’ assertion that the time spent “getting attorneys up-to-speed on the case or discussing and strategizing about the case are not billable and request a 10% reduction,” was also rejected by Hillman, who didn’t find the “conferencing” hours for such a complex case unreasonable. However, the plaintiff’s request for a 50% increase for their success was rejected. “This was an unusual case, but this court does not find it justifies an increase. And while this court recognizes the skill of plaintiffs’ counsel, that is reflected in the lodestar,” said Hillman .
The court also rejected the defendants’ counterargument, that due to the plaintiff’s “mixed success,” a 50% decrease was appropriate. The court rejected the defendants’ theory that a downward variance was appropriate as the plaintiff achieved “nominal success,” finding that an $8 million judgment wasn’t merely considered a “nominal” success.
“Still, the plaintiff’s losses along the way must be accounted for,” determined the court. “The plaintiff’s counsel did not delineate what they were working on in their fee petition. That means a blanket reduction is necessary if the claims are not severable.”
“The legal theories and facts in this litigation are neither wholly severable nor so overlapping that they are incapable of independent analysis,” Hillman continued. “The failure to intervene and malicious prosecution legal theories, for instance, largely overlap factually and overlap to some extent legally with the conspiracy claims insofar as they are all somewhat parasitic on a due process violation. The doctrine of qualified immunity permeated this litigation, and while this court analyzed it claim-by-claim, it would be difficult for plaintiff’s counsel to separate research done on the doctrine in that way. That said, although the underlying alleged facts were all of a similar type—they all supported allegations that plaintiff’s conviction was the result of the bad actions of law enforcement—they were all distinct from each other.”
The court issued a 20% reduction for pretrial work and a 5% reduction for post-trial work, to account for the “minor losses” plaintiff suffered after summary judgment. Thus, the plaintiff’s fees, after the 25% reduction, and after applying the local Worcester rates and reductions for mixed success and overbilling, is reduced from $1,766,002.50 to $675,194.88.
In regards to the plaintiff’s cost requests of $86,605.41 under 28 U.S.C. § 1920 and 42 U.S.C. § 1988, defendants objected “to costs on several broad grounds, requesting an 80% reduction” without citing any case law.
The court rejected “defendants’ across-the-board reduction,” examining their objections in turn. The defendants pointed to what they described as plaintiffs counsel’s “remarkable” travel costs, including repeated flights “back and forth from Chicago, railway travel, hotel, car rental and other costs for client meetings, ‘investigation,’ and deposition preparation.”
According to the court, a Chicago law firm incurring travel costs to litigate in Worcester isn’t remarkable, but the “out-of-state law firms must justify out-of-state costs by showing that no similar in-state services exist.”
“Plaintiff’s counsel argues Loevy & Loevy is a specialized firm that specializes in wrongful incarceration cases, but this court finds that plaintiff could have found comparable representation in Boston,” Hillman said. “Therefore, only travel costs from Boston to Worcester are justified.” Therefore, Hillman said, a reduction of $15,858.06 in travel costs was appropriate.
The court also deducted $1,001.36 for the plaintiff’s counsel using a rental car for the week of the trial to go from their hotel to the courthouse, after concluding that “a taxi or ride-share service would cost an average of $40 a day, and so over a six-day trial transportation should have cost them $240.”
Costs were further reduced by $1,145, after defendants alleged that the deposition costs were duplicative, as plaintiffs had requested costs the recordings of depositions and the transcripts. The court determined that for at least one of the witnesses the video deposition was shown at trial, and the costs of the other video recordings were deducted. $400 in costs were deducted as not all of the plaintiff’s attorneys granted pro hac vice filed motions or argued in the court, in response to defendants objection to all ten of the attorneys receiving reimbursement for pro hac vice admission.
Thus, after “reducing out-of-state costs ($15,858.06), the car rental ($1,001.36), recordings of depositions ($1,145), and excessive pro hac vice applications ($400), this Court finds $68,200.99 in costs proper,” the plaintiff was awarded a total of $743,395.87 in fees and costs.
