A recent Legal Intelligencer story by PJ D’Annunzio, “3rd Circ.: Judge Was Right to Award Nothing After ‘Outrageously Excessive’ $1M Fee Request,” reports that a federal appeals court has upheld the denial of a $1 million fee request by a Scranton attorney in an auto insurance case that produced a verdict almost a tenth of the requested legal compensation. In its denial, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, joining other circuit courts, also held that it is within a judge’s discretion to award no attorney fees at all, especially if the fee request is deemed “outrageously excessive.”
The ruling stems from plaintiff Bernie Clemens’ bad-faith case against New York Central Mutual Fire Insurance over its handling of his auto accident case. The claims went before a jury and ended with a $100,000 punitive damages award. The defendants had settled Clemens’ uninsured motorist claim for $25,000.
The case was handled by Mike Pisanchyn of the Pisanchyn Law Firm in Scranton. After the case was resolved, Pisanchyn asked the court to award the seven-figure fee amount. However, U.S. District Judge Malachy Mannion of the Middle District of Pennsylvania was taken aback by the sheer size of the number—so much so that he awarded Pisanchyn and his firm nothing and referred Pisanchyn for disciplinary review.
Reached for comment, Pisanchyn disagreed that his firm’s fee request was excessive. “In essence, despite us obtaining a $100,000 award on a zero written offer case while we represented the plaintiff over eight to nine years of litigation, the court has determined the plaintiff’s attorney should be awarded nothing,” he said in an email. “However, we do take comfort in the fact that our clients have been compensated and are extremely happy with our representation of them through this almost decade of litigation.”
James Haggerty of Haggerty, Goldberg, Schleifer & Kupersmith in Philadelphia represented Clemens on appeal. “The decision is important in that it addresses an issue regarding the award of counsel fees which had not heretofore been considered by the Third Circuit,” Haggerty said, “The court issued a well-reasoned and well written opinion, finding that the district court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to award counsel fees to trial counsel following his successful recovery of bad faith damages from the defendant insurer.”
Mannion’s 100-page opinion went line-by-line through the request, slashing billed fees he deemed vague, duplicative and excessive. Mannion also took issue with how the firm recreated its timesheets, saying that, while recreating timesheets is allowable if the attorneys did not make them contemporaneously, a number of the entries appeared to be based on guesswork.
The Third Circuit agreed with Mannion’s handling of the request, which found that Pisanchyn and his firm were entitled to recover only 13 percent of the fees they asked for. “In light of that substantial reduction, the district court deemed Clemens’s request ‘outrageously excessive’ and exercised its discretion to award no fee whatsoever,” Third Circuit Judge Joseph Greenaway wrote for the panel, which also included Judges Luis Felipe Restrepo and Stephanos Bibas.
“Although it was unusual, we cannot say that this decision was an abuse of discretion,” Greenaway added. ”Review of the record and the district court’s comprehensive opinion makes clear that denial of a fee award was entirely appropriate under the circumstances of this case. Counsel’s success at trial notwithstanding, the fee petition was severely deficient in numerous ways.” Mannion had said one of the most “egregious” requests included billing 562 hours for trial preparation, with the plaintiffs attorneys entering between 20 and 22 hours per day on some days. The Third Circuit examined that figure in detail.
“All the more troubling is the fact that counsel’s (supposedly) hard work did not appear to pay off at trial. As the district court explained, counsel had ‘to be repeatedly admonished for not being prepared because he was obviously unfamiliar with the Federal Rules of Evidence, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the rulings of th[e] court,” Greenaway said. “Given counsel’s subpar performance and the vagueness and excessiveness of the time entries, the district court did not abuse its discretion in disallowing all 562 hours.”
Greenaway continued, “Aside from the problems with the hours billed for individual tasks, counsel also neglected their burden of showing that their requested hourly rates were reasonable in light of the prevailing rates ‘in the community for similar services by lawyers of reasonably comparable skill, experience, and reputation.’”