Title: Kahn v. Canfield

State: oregon

Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court

Document:

Filed:  February 24, 2000
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON

STEPHEN KAHNand CHRISTINE KAHN,
	Respondents on Review,
	v.
CHRISTOPHER CANFIELD,JANET LEE 
TUININGA, NICHOLAS M. CUTTING, CANFIELD ASSOCIATES, OREG. LTD.,CERRO GORDO FORESTRY COOPERATIVE, INC.,TOWN FORUM, INC.,CERRO GORDO SILVICULTURE, L.L.C,and CERRO GORDO COOPERATIVE, INC.,
	Petitioners on Review,
	and
CERRO GORDO CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, INC.,CERRO GORDO WATER SERVICE COOPERATIVE, INC.,and JOHN DOES 1-25,
	Defendants.
(CC 16-95-06314; CA A95887; SC S46576)

	En Banc
	On petitions for attorney fees filed October 19, 1999, and
November 18, 1999.
	David A. Bahr of Bahr & Stotter Law Offices, Eugene, filed
the petitions for attorney fees for respondents on review.
	George W. Kelly, Eugene, filed the objections for
respondents on review.
	GILLETTE, J.
	Plaintiffs are awarded $11,651.15 as reasonable attorney
fees on review.
		Petitioners (hereafter referred to by their trial role as "plaintiffs"), who prevailed against respondents
(hereafter "defendants") both at trial and in the Court of
Appeals in an underlying action for fraud, breach of contract,
ORICO, and other statutory violations, seek $15,065.89 (1) in
attorney fees for their efforts in filing a response to
defendants' petition for review by this court.  Plaintiffs claim
entitlement to those fees under three statutes:  ORS
166.725(7)(a) (1993) (providing an action and authorizing an
award of "reasonably incurred" attorney fees to any person
injured by a violation of Oregon's racketeering statute); (2) ORS
20.096 (1993) (providing for reasonable attorney fees to the
prevailing party in a contract action when the underlying
contract provides for attorney fees for enforcement); and ORS
648.135(2) (providing for attorney fees "reasonably incurred" in
actions involving a violation of the statutory prohibition
against conducting business under an unregistered name).  We
conclude that plaintiffs are entitled to an award of attorney
fees, but that the amount that they seek is excessive.  We
determine that $11,651.15 in attorney fees were "reasonably
incurred" and that plaintiffs are entitled to an award in that
amount.
		Plaintiffs retained lawyers to represent them, on a
contingent fee basis, in complex litigation arising out of a real
estate transaction.  The case went to trial, and the jury
returned a 31-page special verdict in plaintiffs' favor. 
Defendants appealed the ensuing judgment, but the Court of
Appeals affirmed without issuing an opinion.  Kahn v. Canfield,
158 Or App 144, 972 P2d 1233 (1999).  Defendants then filed a
petition for review in this court.  Plaintiffs responded by
filing a 35-page response urging this court to deny review.  We
denied review on September 21, 1999.  Kahn v. Canfield, 329 Or
357, ___ P2d ___ (1999).  Plaintiffs now request an award of
attorney fees for their lawyers' efforts in responding to
defendants' petition in this court. (3)  
		In support of their request, plaintiffs have submitted
a statement of facts, verified by one of their lawyers, that
purports to demonstrate the reasonableness of the requested
amount.  The statement asserts that five lawyers, all members of
the same Eugene law firm, worked a total of 107.62 hours on
responding to defendants' petition for review. (4)  The statement
sets out billing rates, ranging from $65 to $150 per hour for
each of the five lawyers.  The statement also claims small
amounts for postage, photocopies, and telephone calls.   
		Plaintiffs' lawyers assert, in the verified statement,
that the hours, rates, and resulting overall fee request are
reasonable in light of (1) the complexity and difficulty of the
litigation; (2) the skill and experience required to litigate the
case and the level and skill and experience that they, in fact,
brought to the case; (3) the fact that they accepted the case
under a contingent fee arrangement; and (4) plaintiffs' awareness
that their acceptance of the case would preclude other employment
opportunities.  The lawyers note that they have been awarded fees
based on rates that are the same as or similar to the ones
requested in other litigation (including the appeal of the
present case in the Court of Appeals) and that the requested
rates are consistent with those of lawyers with comparable
experience in their community.
		Defendants do not appear to dispute that plaintiffs are
entitled to reasonable attorney fees under the statutes cited. 
As we noted in a companion case, Dockins v. State Farm Ins. Co.,
___ Or ___, ___ P2d ___ (February 24, 2000) (slip op at 6), when
an attorney fees petition comports with the requirements of ORAP
13.10(5), as this one does, our inquiry into the request
generally will be limited to the objections that are filed by the
party opposing the petition.  Here, defendants raise a single
objection to plaintiffs' attorney fees request -- that the total
amount requested is excessive in view of the fact that "most" of
the document produced in response to defendants' petition for
review "is either direct quotation from, or nearly direct
quotation from, [plaintiffs'] brief in the [C]ourt of [A]ppeals." 
Defendants argue that, despite the hours and services claimed,
plaintiffs' lawyers produced little original work in preparing
defendants' response to plaintiffs' petition for review and,
therefore, should not receive the sum requested. (5) 
		In response to that objection, plaintiffs assert that: 
(1) the duplications noted by defendants were appropriate and
justified as a time-saving device; (2) on the whole, the document
filed in this court was a "unique and individual work product"
that required a significant period of time to produce; and (3)
because defendants' objection is aimed broadly at the total
amount of attorney fees requested, rather than at specific time
expenditures, it is too general to merit serious consideration.
		Plaintiffs' last point takes an unjustifiably narrow
view of defendants' objection.  Although plaintiffs are correct
that defendants have not singled out specific items from the
lawyers' time reports as false or unreasonable, such specificity
not always is required, and even may not make sense, in the
context of the kind of objection involved in this case.  Fairly
read, the objection argues that the overall time that plaintiffs'
lawyers claim for researching and drafting the document at issue
is unreasonable, because a large portion of the document was
drawn verbatim from an earlier brief.  Depending upon the amount
of time claimed, that objection may be valid:  Although 107 hours
might not raise questions in the production of a 35-page work
product that is researched and written "from scratch" in the
context of a complex case, the same cannot be said for a 35-page
document that does little more than repeat arguments that were
researched thoroughly and developed at an earlier stage in the
proceedings and, in this case, already have been compensated.
		The question remains, however, whether the work product
at issue here is, as defendants argue, nothing more than a repeat
of earlier work.  Plaintiffs contend that it is not -- that,
although parts of the Court of Appeals' brief were incorporated
in the document, it nevertheless represents a unique work
product, the vast majority of which was researched and drafted
for this court.  
		We have reviewed plaintiffs' Court of Appeals brief and
their response to defendants' petition for review in light of
defendants' argument.  Our own comparison leaves us somewhere in
the middle.  The response draws heavily from plaintiffs' Court of
Appeals brief, but it also contains a significant amount of "new"
material.  Ultimately, however, there is enough duplication
between plaintiffs' response and their Court of Appeals brief on
the merits that we cannot accept the entire time expenditure
claimed by plaintiffs' lawyers as reasonable.  We are persuaded
that, because significant parts of the arguments in the document
already had been developed and drafted for plaintiffs' brief in
the Court of Appeals, plaintiffs' lawyers should have been able
to produce their response to defendants' petition for review in,
at most, 80 hours.  We reduce plaintiffs' attorney fees request
accordingly.                  
		Defendants have confined themselves to the single
objection that we have discussed.  We confine our inquiry into
the reasonableness of plaintiffs' request accordingly.  See
Dockins, ___ Or at __ (slip op at 10) (in ordinary case, court
will limit its review of an attorney fees request to the grounds
asserted in objections filed by party opposing fee request).
		Plaintiffs are awarded $11,651.15 (6) as reasonable
attorney fees on appeal.  

1. 	The figure is the total of the amounts requested by an
original petition and a supplementary petition.  The request in
the later petition -- for $1,372.73 -- is disputed, but we do not
find the arguments respecting it to be well taken.  Thus, the
discussion that follows relates only to plaintiffs' original
request for an award of $13,693.16.

2. 	ORS 166.725(7)(a) (1993) is part of the 1993 version of
Oregon's racketeering statute (ORICO).  It provides:
	"Any person who is injured by reason of any
violation of the provisions of ORS 166.720 shall have a
cause of action for three-fold the actual damages
sustained and, when appropriate, punitive damages. 
Such person shall also recover attorney fees in the
trial and appellate courts and costs of investigation
and litigation, reasonably incurred."

3. 	Plaintiffs already have obtained attorney fee awards
for the work of their lawyers at trial and in the Court of
Appeals.

4. 	The statement also provides detailed information,
culled from the lawyers' individual timesheets, showing the hours
expended on the matter on a daily basis and the services
provided.

5. 	Defendants do not suggest an amount that they believe
would be reasonable for the services at issue.

6. 	That amount represents the fraction 80/107.62,
multiplied by the amount requested as attorney fees by plaintiffs
in their original petition.  That result is $10,163.90.  To that,
we have added the amount requested in plaintiffs' supplemental
petition.  In addition, we approve the incidental expenses that
plaintiffs claim and to which defendants have raised no separate
objection.