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: Virginia Qui Tam Law

New Opinion on Reasonable Attorney's Fees in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia

By Zachary A. Kitts

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Today Judge Cacheris issued a favorable opinion on my petition for attorney's fees in a Fair Labor Standards Act case.   Although the case was an FLSA case and not a False Claims Act case, the same concepts apply to any prevailing plaintiff in an action brought under a fee-shifting statute in the Fourth Circuit. The opinion is attached here.

A reasonable attorney's fee in a fee-shifting case is determined by multiplying a reasonable hourly rate for the attorney by his or her reasonable time expenditures. This approach is generally known as the lodestar method, and it seems simple enough. However, the attorney needs to establish the reasonable hourly rate and the reasonable nature of the time entries.

I think the opinion is interesting for several reasons. First, a number of Fourth Circuit opinions over the last couple of years have rejected the use of the "Laffey Matrix" to set reasonable rates for an attorney's hourly fee. However, the Fourth Circuit has merely stated the obvious--the Laffey Matrix is not enough standing alone to establish a reasonable hourly rate; rather, the Laffey Matrix can be considered as evidence of a reasonable hourly rate, but only in conjunction with other evidence. Judge Cacheris' opinion takes this approach.

Second, this opinion shows that you prove your reasonable attorney's fees the same way you prove anything else in Court--you introduce relevant and admissible evidence. How do you get relevant evidence to be admissible, and thus get it in the record? You call witnesses, of course, and in this particular context, you do it in the form of written declarations. My petition was supported by my own testimony, as well as the testimony of a few other lawyers who supported the reasonable nature of my fees.

The third thing I think this opinion shows is the need for attorneys to track their time as they perform their work, and to send regular invoices to clients, even when the case is taken on a contingency fee basis. Courts almost universally disfavor "block entries" of time--i.e., a large chunk of time without a clear description of what work was performed. An example of a block-entry would be something like "Reviewed File; Drafted Memo--8.0 Hours" or "Drafted Motion in Limine and Researched Precedent--11.0 Hours."

If I were a client, I would hit the roof if an attorney sent me such a bill. Large blocks of time without clear descriptions do not enable Courts--or clients, for that matter--to determine what work was performed, and why it took so long. Without those two pieces of information, the client is at a real disadvantage in trying to discern how productive their lawyers are and how much value they are getting for their money.

And, provided that a lawyer bills his or her own clients honestly, that is perhaps the best rule of thumb I can think of--a lawyer should never try to get a Court to make a defendant pay a bill that that lawyer would not send to his or her own client.

Full post as published by Virginia Qui Tam Law on April 28, 2010 (boomark / email).