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Plaintiffs’ Must Produce Billing Records in NCAA $45M Fee Request

August 21, 2019 | Posted in : Billing Practices, Billing Record / Entries, Fee Discovery / Fee Disclosure, Fee Expert / Member, Fee Request, Lodestar, Practice Area: Class Action / Mass Tort / MDL

A recent Law 360 story by Dorothy Atkins, “NCAA Athletes Must Produce Billing Records in $45M Fee Ask,” reports that a California magistrate judge granted the NCAA's request for attorneys representing student-athletes to produce five years of billing records to support their bid for $45 million in fees for winning a ban on certain pay restrictions but said the cost of producing records can be added to their fees.

During a hearing in San Jose, U.S. Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins ordered the athletes to produce the records so that the NCAA's attorneys can review them and ensure there aren't clerical errors, double billing or charges for time the attorneys spent doing media interviews.  He said the records can be subject to a protective order if necessary and he's not waiving any attorney-client privilege.

He also acknowledged that the time and expense it takes for the athletes' counsel to produce the records might not justify the amount of money the NCAA could potentially save in reviewing the records.  However, Judge Cousins said the athletes' counsel can charge the NCAA for the work.  "That's clearly what the defense has asked for," the judge said.

The judge's ruling came at the end of a hearing on the athletes' request for $45 million in fees for securing a permanent injunction in March after a weekslong landmark antitrust bench trial that bars the NCAA from restricting student-athletes' education-related compensation.  After the decision, counsel for the athletes sought to recoup the $30 million they said they sank into the long-running litigation, plus another $15 million based on a 1.5 multiplier, in light of "the exceptional nature of the outcome," and roughly $1.3 million in costs.

During the hearing, Karen Hoffman Lent of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP, who argued on behalf of the NCAA defendants, said they wouldn't object to awarding the five lead plaintiffs between $10,000 and $15,000 each.  However, she complained that the athletes' attorneys only submitted a list of attorneys and their work hours, which totaled 51,000 hours, to support their $45 million fee request.  "It's a lot of money they're asking for, with virtually no evidence or support," she said.  Lent argued that the NCAA is entitled to more details about the records so that they can review them with a "much more critical eye."

However, the athletes' counsel, Jeffrey L. Kessler of Winston & Strawn LLP, pushed back, arguing that the NCAA is trying to conduct an unfair "fishing expedition" into their billing records.  Kessler said there's no evidence that lead counsel's hourly rates are excessive or they've duplicated their work.  He said it would also be "enormously burdensome" to redact five-years worth of billing records, which he argued contains privileged work-product material.

Kessler added that if they have to produce their billing records, then the NCAA's legal counsel should also have to produce their records, which he said they don't want to do.  Kessler pointed out that approximately a dozen law firms representing the NCAA defendants have "dwarfed" the athletes in their legal fees and those firms had charged the NCAA defendants $60.7 million as of June 2018, which was months before a trial was held before U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilkin in November.  "The idea the size of [our request] warrants it is just false," Kessler said of the NCAA's demand for its billing records.

Kessler also argued that the injunction they achieved against the NCAA is an extraordinary result for athletes.  He noted that the athletes' expert, University of San Francisco professor Daniel Rascher, conservatively estimates that the injunction will provide NCAA athletes with $235 million a year in additional benefits.  Therefore, he said, a 1.5 multiplier is on the low end, considering $45 million represents 12.7% of the $235 million a year in additional benefits.