This article continues an article posted here earlier this week, LODESTAR ATTORNEY'S FEES AWARDED FOR BAD FAITH ... OF PLAINTIFF'S COUNSEL.
As promised, this is the hidden story embedded in the attorney's fees application and award in Baker v. Allstate Ins. Co., No. 2:19-cv-08024-ODW (JCx), 2020 WL 978729 (C.D. Cal. February 28, 2020). Let's try to break this down into the way the District Judge must have seen it all.
First, on November 26, 2019, Allstate's attorneys filed an "Application" requesting sanctions in the amount of $6,370.00 against the plaintiffs' former counsel in the case. The lead attorney for Allstate testified in a declaration submitted with the Application at that time.
Allstate's lead attorney testified in November that only he and another attorney for a total of two attorneys handled Allstate's Application. Baker, 2020 WL 978729, at *1. After holding a hearing on the request for sanctions in December, the Court granted the request.
The month after the Application and testimony in November, and shortly after the December hearing at which the sanctioned former counsel "also agreed to pay monetary sanctions," Allstate's lawyers requested a new amount of $41,748.00. They represented to the Court that their firm actually "had three attorneys bill on this matter[.]" Baker, 2020 WL 978729, at *3 (emphasis added).
Besides testifying that there were only two Allstate lawyers involved in presenting the Application, the lead attorney for Allstate also testified in November that the Application was the product of 13 hours. The Court noted that this representation was "made under the penalty of perjury[.]" Baker, 2020 WL 978729, at *3. A month or so later, Allstate's lawyers were representing to the Court that they had actually "expended 33.2 hours to bring [Allstate's] Application." The Court characterized this later representation as seeking "a do-over[.]" The Court also described this as the lawyers' "attempt to back door an additional 20.2 hours[.]" Baker, 2020 WL 978729, at *3.
The sanctioned former counsel took the position that these representations were not what he had agreed to when he agreed to monetary sanctions based on the Application and the initial testimony of Allstate's lawyers about how many lawyers, how many hours, and how much money Allstate claimed in the first place. He requested "that the Court award Allstate no more than its original request of $6370." Baker, 2020 WL 978729, at *3.
However, the Court did not grant his request.
Instead, the Court applied its understanding of the rule in the Ninth Circuit that "[g]enerally, in assessing attorneys' fees, the court should calculate the 'lodestar' figure," which involves multiplying the number of hours reasonably claimed by a reasonable hourly rate. Even after that, the Court noted, it could still adjust the claim down depending on "reasonableness." Baker, 2020 WL 978729, at *2.
Significantly, the Court proceeded to apply the general rule to this particular case. The Court considered the lawyers' higher request for fees in this particular case anyway. Along the way to a higher award than Allstate originally requested and its lawyers testified, the Court reduced the lawyer's newly claimed hours because certain hours "provide no description," other hours "were unnecessarily incurred," some hours were nothing more than "block-billing," and still other hours were submitted "for travel time and straightforward research, tasks which do not require great litigation skill." Baker, 2020 WL 978729, at *3-*5.
It is also significant that the Court "lowered" every one of Allstate's lawyer's hourly rates to $420.00/hour.
Then the Court awarded $17,808.00 in attorney's fees. Baker, 2020 WL 978729, at *5.
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