A recent Law.com story by Allison Dunn, “Following $1.94M Judgment, Federal Judge Slashes Plaintiff’s Requested Attorney Fees and Costs by 25%” reports that a federal judge in Maryland adopted a magistrate’s recommendation in full, awarding a plaintiff in a breach-of-contract action $786,565 in fees and costs, approximately 25% less than the requested amount due to apparent duplication of efforts between old and new counsel.
The combined request for $793,614 in attorney fees was made by current and former counsel of Byron W. Martz, who prevailed in a case against Day Development Co. in a dispute involving a consulting services agreement. Under the agreement, DDC was obligated to pay Martz for securing Frederick, Maryland’s approval to amend a previously approved land development plan. DDC never developed nor sold the land, and it failed to compensate Martz for his services, according to the report and recommendation filed earlier this month by U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Maddox for the District of Maryland.
After a bench trial in 2019, Judge Catherine C. Blake entered a judgment in favor of Martz in the amount of $1.94 million on his claim for unjust enrichment. At the time the case was filed in Frederick County Circuit Court in September 2015, Martz was represented by veteran Miles & Stockbridge attorneys Thomas E. Lynch III, who has since retired, and John E. McCann Jr., a principal in the firm’s commercial and business litigation practice group. Additionally, Jeremy S. Scholtes, a mid-level associate with the firm, was assigned to the case.
The firm requested that Martz be granted an award of $394,299.50 in fees for 1,069.6 hours of work performed by the three attorneys in 2015 and 2016, which all contributed to the successful outcome for the plaintiff, the report said. Specifically, the attorneys requested a total of $164,483 in fees for 445.7 hours of work performed on written discovery and production of documents. The defendants argued that the opposing counsel “spent excessive time drafting, revising, and reviewing answers to interrogatories and documents for production, and conferencing regarding the same,” and that its invoices reflect “over-lawyering and over-staffing by attorneys billing for unnecessary, duplicative work,” though Miles & Stockbridge countered that the defendants failed to identify a specific incident of when this occurred, the report said..
After reviewing Miles & Stockbridge’s invoices, Maddox said that he agreed with the defendants regarding the “excessive amount of time spent by multiple attorneys reviewing documents and revising written discovery responses,” and recommended a 25% reduction from the requested $160,877 to $120,657.75.
“I recognize that the Court’s Guidelines for Attorneys’ Fees permit more than one lawyer to be compensated for attending conferences among counsel ‘where justified for specific purposes[.]‘ One common type of meeting that justifies compensation for every participating attorney is a ‘periodic conference[] of defined duration held for the purpose of work organization, strategy, and delegation of tasks in cases where such conferences are reasonably necessary for the proper management of the litigation.’ For example, one such strategy conference among the three [Miles & Stockbridge] attorneys appears to have occurred on February 18, 2016,” Maddox wrote. ”However, following that date were several conferences and communications among counsel regarding discovery, which punctuate apparently duplicative rounds of written discovery response and document review by multiple attorneys. [Miles & Stockbridge] counsel requests fees for all participants of these frequent conferences.”
In 2016, Martz retained new counsel, Leslie A. Powell, who has 35 years of experience in complex litigation, and Paul D. Flynn, with more than 15 years of experience, both of the Powell Firm in Frederick. Attorneys Carla N. Clarke and Peter E. Ciferri, who had between five and eight years of litigation experience, as well as Clark S. Adams and Heath L. Schneibolk, with less than five years of experience, were also assigned to the case.
Once the Powell Firm took over the case, it had to repeat some work already accomplished by Miles & Stockbridge to become familiar with the case. However, Maddox said such duplication of effort is not compensable in an award for reasonable attorney fees, citing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit’s 1992 opinion in Goodwin v. Metts.
In total, the Powell Firm requested a total of $399,314.50 in fees for 1,543.7 hours worked by six attorneys since 2016. For case development, background investigation and case administration, the firm argued that the fee award should not be reduced for duplicative work because these efforts contributed to counsel’s “success in obtaining summary judgment on liability and then a substantial monetary award at trial,” the report said..
“While I understand plaintiff’s position that these activities did not rely upon work previously done by his prior [Miles & Stockbridge] counsel, at least a significant portion of this work appears to have been also separately performed by [Miles & Stockbridge] counsel, according to their invoices, and is therefore duplicative,” Maddox wrote. “Given the apparent non-compensable duplication of services between Plaintiff’s prior [Miles & Stockbridge] counsel and his Powell Firm counsel shown in Powell Firm time entries attributed to case development, the undersigned recommends that Plaintiff’s fee request for case development be reduced by 25%. A 25% reduction from $31,459.00 results in a fee award of $23,594.25 attributed to case development by [the] Powell Firm.”
Maddox recommended that the plaintiff be awarded a total of $786,565.13, with $344,070.25 in attorney fees for the service of Miles & Stockbridge counsel, and $391.449.25 in attorney fees for the Powell Firm counsel. Additionally, $47,267 will go to the services of expert witnesses and $3,678 in other litigation expenses.