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Yet Another Reminder About Attorney Fees Petitions

By Zachary A. Kitts

The Virginia Lawyer's Weekly blog has a post today relating to the use of the Laffey-Matrix in fee shifting cases.  It is not clear whether the Laffey Matrix at issue is the real Laffey Matrix (that is, the one prepared by the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Division) or the Laffey Matrix prepared by a private-sector expert economist.    

Actually, the blog post--like the Fourth Circuit's recent opinion--has little to do with "the Matrix."  Instead, the opinion has more to do with the Fourth Circuit's on-going refusal to award attorney's fees at a particular hourly rate without some evidence to support that rate as reasonable. 

In Robinson v. Equifax Information Services, Judge Lee in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia awarded an attorney $268,652 in attorney's fees on a $200,000 damage award under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.  The FCRA carries a mandatory attorney's fees provision, requiring a losing defendant to pay all of the reasonable attorney's fees incurred by a plaintiff.  

The real Laffey Matrix is prepared each by the U.S. Department of Justice, and sets forth the reasonable market-supported attorney's fees for the D.C. area.  The plaintiff's attorneys wisely attached a copy of the most recent Laffey Matrix with their attorney's fee petition. 

They failed to include evidence that the Laffey Matrix rate was a reasonable one for their work.  Such evidence is normally provide by way of an affidavit from a fellow attorney saying that the rates in the Laffey Matrix were reasonable ones for the work on the case.     

On March 16, a Fourth Circuit appellate panel affirmed the damage award but sent the case back for recalculation of the attorney?s fees after more evidence on the ?prevailing rate?--i.e., an affidavit such as this one.  

  

Full post as published by Virginia Qui Tam Law on March 18, 2009 (boomark / email).