A recent Law 360 story by Caleb Symons, “Pillsbury Blasted for ‘Unreasonable’ Atty Fees in Cinema Row,” reports that Chinese cinema magnate Hui Qin has accused top attorneys at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP of spending too much time handling routine court filings, telling a federal judge that the firm "egregiously inflated" a fee estimate in litigation filed by several of his investors.  The lawsuit is proving contentious well after a Manhattan federal judge last year ordered Qin to satisfy a $457 million award that three investors in his movie theater company, Chengdu Run Yun Culture Communication Co. Ltd., obtained following Chengdu's failed IPO.

With the investors — all entities of Chinese asset manager Zhongzhi Group Enterprises — now seeking an additional $161,000 in attorney fees, Qin lashed out at their counsel, Pillsbury, for a pattern of overbilling that he called "breathtaking in scope."  Pillsbury identified nine people who collectively spent 557 hours preparing a sanctions motion for the investors, according to Qin, who noted that the firm didn't even include paralegals or other staff in that list. Even though the investors are seeking compensation for only a portion of that work — 229 hours, performed by two partners and one counsel — the movie theater magnate said there is still no "reasonable justification" for such a commitment.

Time entries that the petitioners have submitted, Qin argued that Pillsbury's top attorneys "hogged the work, failing to delegate tasks to junior lawyers."  The billing fight comes amid an enforcement case the Chengdu investors — Huzhou Chuangtai Rongyuan Investment Management Partnership, Huzhou Huihengying Equity Investment Partnership and Huzhou Huirongsheng Equity Investment Partnership — filed in late 2021.

After a Manhattan federal judge confirmed their $457 million arbitral award last September, the group accused Qin of ducking their attempts to identify his assets.  The cinema tycoon, who Forbes once estimated was worth $1.8 billion, has mainly turned over records that are already in the public domain, but withheld bank documents and details on real estate transactions, they claimed in February.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla again sided with the investors this spring, telling Qin to submit to deposition and ordering him to reimburse the petitioners for legal fees in connection with their sanctions request.  Those costs include $161,374.50 in attorney fees, according to the investors, who said that figure represents less than 50% of their true expenses.  The group, in a lightly redacted May 9 court filing, said it had "voluntarily chosen not to seek fees from other attorneys who have worked on this matter."

Even accounting for those omissions, though, Qin responded by lambasting Pillsbury for billing practices that he called "grossly unreasonable on their face."  The sanctions motion shouldn't have taken hundreds of hours to prepare, he said, especially for top lawyers at the firm.  Such overbilling, Qin said, "is even more egregious given the garden-variety discovery issues in the motion."

"Petitioners cannot make their bloated billing seem reasonable by limiting their fee application to the work done by three of their most senior lawyers," he argued.  "Having two partners and a counsel bill nearly 230 hours on a discovery motion is excessive by any standard."  Pillsbury's invoices are also "replete" with instances of block billing, in which an attorney lumps together multiple tasks without specifying how much time was spent completing each item, according to Qin.

Approximately 220 hours of the firm's sanctions-related work were block billed, he said.  Those entries, Qin added, "make it impossible to assess the reasonableness of the work performed and whether it was performed by an attorney at an appropriate level of seniority."

The cinema magnate said his investors also redacted most of the Pillsbury lawyers' time entries, leaving "massive gaps in the record."  That information, Qin said, is important to determine if counsel spent a reasonable amount of time on the sanctions question.  "Thus, for example, it is impossible to determine whether work described in the unredacted entries is entirely duplicative of work performed in the redacted time entries," he said.

Pillsbury partner Geoffrey Sant, co-leader of the firm's China practice, rebuffed the allegations of overbilling in a statement to Law360.  The investors didn't present "garden-variety" issues as Qin alleged, he said, also accusing the cinema tycoon's lawyers of improperly quoting information that had been filed under seal.  Qin's new filing, Sant said, "is entirely without merit and merely [his] most recent attempt to evade responsibility for his actions."