A recent Texas Lawyer story, “Judge Slashes Attorney Fees in $4M Oil Patch Dispute,” reports that a west Texas federal judge gave a proposal for attorney fees a $12,000 haircut after plaintiffs, who won a $4 million no-answer default in an oil patch dispute, had sought more than $22,000.  Senior U.S. District Judge Sam R. Cummings of the Western District in Lubbock issued an order in Carrington v. Home Creek Energy and stated that the number of hours the plaintiffs claimed that their legal team worked to win the no-answer default judgment seemed excessive.

Fernando Bustos of the Law Offices of Fernando Bustos Law Firm in Lubbock, noted that his clients won in the breach of contract litigation an agreed judgment against other defendants, as well as the $4 million no-answer default judgment, which is against Paradigm Oil & Gas, a company with headquarters in Indian Rock Beach, Florida.  Bustos said Paradigm had merged with other corporate defendants and holds liabilities for them.

In his order, Cummings wrote that some of the hours the plaintiffs listed as billed had been logged when their lawyers worked on matters related to defendants other than Paradigm.  Cummings slashed by 50 percent the estimates of the number of hours that the attorneys and paralegals from Bustos’ office had worked to win the no-answer default judgment.  But Cummings calculated that they instead had logged only 23 paralegal hours, 24 associates hours and eight partner hours to win it.