IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS

EASTERN DIVISION

TOMMY KASALO, )

)

Plaintiff, )

)

vs. ) Case No. 12 C 2900

)

TRIDENT ASSET MANAGEMENT, )

LLC and OPS 10 LLC, )

)

Defendants. )

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

MATTHEW F. KENNELLY, District Judge:

Tommy Kasalo sued Trident Asset Management, LLC and OPS 10 LLC under 

the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, asserting a number of claims arising from their 

attempt to collect a debt from him in 2012. He prevailed against Trident after accepting 

an offer of judgment following more than two years of litigation, and he has now

petitioned for attorney's fees under the FDCPA. Kasalo was represented by his brother 

Mario Kasalo, so to keep things simple the Court will refer to them by the descriptive 

titles "plaintiff" and "counsel."

Background

As indicated above, plaintiff sued two defendants, Trident and OPS, concerning 

their efforts to collect a debt from him. After discovery was completed, the Court 

granted summary judgment in favor of OPS on the ground that it is not a debt collector 

within the meaning of the FDCPA. On plaintiff's claims against Trident, the Court 

granted summary judgment in favor of Trident on three of them but granted summary 

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judgment in plaintiff's favor as to liability on three others. Plaintiff conceded that he 

could not prove "actual" damages; instead, he sought only statutory damages under the 

FDCPA. Because all of his claims arose from the same collection attempt, plaintiff's

maximum statutory award was $1,000. After the Court's summary judgment ruling, 

Trident made an offer of judgment in the amount of $1,000 plus reasonable attorney's 

fees and costs pursuant to the FDCPA through August 16, 2014, with the amount to be 

determined by the Court. Plaintiff accepted the offer, and the Court entered judgment 

against Trident based on the terms of its offer of judgment.

 The description the Court gave makes the litigation sound quite simple. In fact, 

however, it was not all that simple. The defendants initially filed an answer that included 

a number of deficiencies, and plaintiff reasonably filed a motion to strike it. When it 

became apparent that the defendants were denying liability, plaintiff amended his

complaint, twice, to ensure that he was asserting viable claims. The defendants 

opposed one of these motions, and plaintiffs was required to file briefs to persuade the 

Court to allow him to amend. The defendants asserted a "bona fide error" defense, and 

this, and other denials in their answer, required plaintiff to take several depositions. 

There were also several discovery disputes that had to be litigated. 

In addition, during the course of discovery, defendants admitted a key point, and 

plaintiff ultimately moved for summary judgment based in significant part on this 

admission. Defendants then moved to withdraw the admission. Plaintiff reasonably 

opposed the request, which required further briefing. When the Court permitted 

defendants to withdraw the admission—conditioning this on their payment of the 

reasonable fees for work that plaintiff had to redo—plaintiff was required to revise and 

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refile his summary judgment materials. Extensive briefing of the parties' cross-motions 

for summary judgment followed. All told, the litigation lasted about two years from filing

through the completion of briefing on the summary judgment motions. 

With the likely maximum damages capped at $1,000 under the FDCPA, one 

might wonder why the case was not settled at a far earlier stage. Prior to the initial

scheduling conference, the Court, pursuant to its usual practice, directed the parties to 

exchange settlement proposals. Plaintiff, through counsel, made a settlement demand 

of $5,000, which included attorney's fees and expenses of $4,000. One might think this 

was on the high side given the early stage of the litigation. But in fact it was not, based 

on the work counsel had put into the case by that point. Through July 3, 2012, the date 

plaintiff made his initial demand of $5,000, counsel had put in 8.15 hours of time, for a 

total of $2,852.50 at his requested pre-2014 rate of $350 per hour; counsel's law clerk / 

paralegal had put in 2.4 hours of time, for a total of $240 at the requested rate of $100 

per hour; and expenses had been incurred of $350 for the filing fee and $85 to obtain 

service, for another $435. The sum of these amounts is $3,527.50. Added to the 

$1,000 in recoverable statutory damages, that would total $4,527.50. If one figured in 

the time it would have taken for counsel, upon settlement, to review a draft release and 

obtain plaintiff's signature—time that reasonably would be built into an initial settlement 

demand—the total likely would be right at the $4,000 in fees and expenses plaintiff

sought in his initial demand. Thus the initial settlement demand of $5,000 was not 

unreasonably high.

Plaintiff made his initial settlement demand of $5,000 just before the parties' 

initial conference with the Court, so defendants asked for time to respond. However, as 

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counsel reported to the Court at the next conference, defendants ended up making no 

initial offer in response to the initial demand. After learning that defendants were not 

making an offer, plaintiff's counsel prepared and filed an amended complaint. As a 

result, before the second conference with the Court, plaintiff's settlement demand 

increased, but only a bit, to $5,750. (As before, this was no higher than statutory 

damages of $1,000 plus the attorney and law clerk time and expenses counsel had put 

into the case at that point.) In response, the defendants offered $3,000. Plaintiff

countered with $5,500. And that, it appears, is where the negotiations stopped. 

Defendants made no counterproposal and stood pat at $3,000. It was not unreasonable 

for plaintiff to decline to accept that offer.

Given the foreseeable cost of litigating the case through to its conclusion, one 

might question why the defendants did not make a higher offer and indeed why they did 

not accept plaintiff's initial demand of $5,000 or even his later demand of $5,500. If—as 

the Court assumes is the case—defendants believed that the requested fee was too 

high, it is even more curious that they did not make an offer of judgment for the 

maximum statutory award of $1,000 plus reasonable fees to be determined by the 

Court—as they ultimately did two years later, after they lost on summary judgment. For 

whatever reason, however, defendants did not do that back in 2012. Rather, they 

chose to stand and fight. And by fighting, they ended up spending about $150,000, 

representing about 600 hours of attorney time at various rates.

If defendants had made an offer of judgment at or near the outset of the litigation

along the lines indicated, they would have saved virtually all of the $150,000 they spent 

on their own legal fees, and the fee award to plaintiff's counsel likely would have 

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resulted in a total payment of damages plus fees somewhere around the $5,500 figure 

that plaintiff demanded in his last pre-discovery settlement proposal. That figure was 

only $2,500 more than defendants were willing to offer at the time. For want of that 

$2,500, defendants lost the $150,000 they spent on fees, as well as the lesser but still

very significant amount the Court awards in this order.

Discussion

The Court turns to plaintiff's request for fees and defendants' objections. Plaintiff

seeks attorney's fees of $116,460 (including a modest amount of law clerk / paralegal 

time) and $3,315 in costs. The attorney's fee component is about 77 percent of the 

nearly $150,000 that defendants spent on their legal fees. The comparison is 

somewhat rough, because defendants' total includes fees attributable to the claims 

against OPD, which plaintiff's counsel has removed from his fee request. But because 

OPS's liability was largely claimed to be vicarious, the amount of defendants' fees 

attributable to the claims against that entity likely were modest. In short, Trident almost 

certainly spent more defending against plaintiff's claims than plaintiff's counsel seeks in

fees and expenses for successfully prosecuting the case against Trident. (The Court 

notes that plaintiff's counsel seeks fees for 326 hours of attorney time and 10 hours of 

law clerk / paralegal time, whereas defendants spent just short of 600 hours defending 

the case.)

Attorney's fees under the FDCPA are determined in the same way as under other 

federal fee-shifting statutes, namely, by multiplying a reasonable hourly rate for the 

attorney's services by the number of hours reasonably expended. See Gastineau v. 

Wright, 592 F.3d 747, 748 (7th Cir. 2010) (citing Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 

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433–37 (1983)). "If necessary, [a] district court has the flexibility to adjust that figure to 

reflect various factors including the complexity of the legal issues involved, the degree 

of success obtained, and the public interest advanced by the litigation." Id. (internal 

quotation marks omitted). 

Plaintiff's counsel says his reasonable hourly rate was $350 through the end of 

2013 and $375 after that. He bears the burden of persuasion on whether those rates 

are reasonable. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 437. Plaintiff's counsel has carried that burden. 

He has been paid at comparable rates in fee-paying litigation, which is the best 

evidence of his appropriate hourly rate. See People Who Care v. Rockford Bd. of Ed., 

Sch. Dist. No. 205, 90 F.3d 1307, 1310 (7th Cir. 1996); Balcor Real Estate Holdings, 

Inc. v. Walentas-Phoenix Corp., 73 F.3d 150, 153 (7th Cir. 1996). In addition, other 

judges have approved the requested rates in similar litigation, which is the next best 

evidence of an attorney's reasonable rate. See Pl.'s Mot. for Atty's Fees and Costs at 8 

(citing exhibits); People Who Care, 90 F.3d at 1310-12. 

Defendants propose for plaintiff's counsel an hourly rate of $275, but they have 

essentially pulled it out of the air. Their only support is a 2011 fee decision involving a 

different attorney in which the judge discussed a range of $200-$300 per hour for work 

performed in 2009-10, and a different fee award for another lawyer, at $250 per hour for 

work done even earlier than 2009-10. See Defs.' Obj. to Pl.'s Pet. for Atty's Fees at 6-7 

(citing Brown v. Patelco Credit Union, No. 09 C 5393, 2011 WL 4375865, at *4 (N.D. Ill. 

Sept. 20, 2011), and Schlacher v. Law Ofcs. of Phillip J. Rotche & Assocs., P.C., 574 

F.3d 852 (7th Cir. 2009)). Given the significant passage of time between the work done 

in those cases and in this case (2012-14), the lower hourly rates approved there do not 

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rebut the persuasive evidence plaintiff's counsel has offered. The Court approves 

counsel's proposed hourly rate of $350 for work from 2012-13 and $375 for work in 

2014. 

The Court also finds reasonable counsel's requested rate of $100 for paralegal / 

law clerk time. Defendants propose $75, but the case they cite involved work done in 

2009, and thus it actually supports the $100 rate proposed by plaintiff's counsel for work 

his law clerk did three to five years later. See Defs.' Obj. at 8 (citing Goodale v. George 

S. May Int'l Co., No. 09 C 7848, 2010 WL 2774013, at *4 (N.D. Ill. July 14, 2010)).

Defendants object to some but not most or all of the time plaintiff's counsel 

claims.1

 Specifically, they object to around 90 hours of the 335 claimed, a little over 

one-fourth of the total. The Court sustains some of defendants' objections and 

overrules others, using the numbering system followed in defendants' response to the 

motion for fees.

Points 1a-c

The Court agrees with defendants that time spent by counsel on work properly 

considered clerical—e-filing, mailing, and delivering—is not properly compensable, even 

at the $100 law clerk rate. On this basis, the Court eliminates 3.1 hours of the law 

clerk's time and 1.6 hours of counsel's time. On the other hand, time reasonably spent 

compiling exhibits on papers filed with the Court, preparing tables of contents, and the 

like, is properly compensable at attorney rates. The Court overrules defendants' 

objections to that time. 

 1 Plaintiff's counsel says he has eliminated time spent pursuing his claim against the 

second defendant, OPS, and defendants do not dispute this.

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Points 2a-g

• Having considered counsel's response and the time records, the Court disagrees 

with defendants' contentions regarding repetitive billing entries (point 2a) and 

time reviewing discovery (2b). 

• The Court also rejects defendants' contention that the time counsel spent 

preparing plaintiff for his deposition is duplicative (2c). Counsel may have 

prepared plaintiff in short bursts over a period of several days, but that does not 

mean the preparation was duplicative. 

• The Court agrees with defendants that the time spent researching certain points 

regarding production of fee records (2d) is duplicative and therefore cuts 2.0 of 

the 4.0 hours charged under that heading. 

• The Court also agrees with defendants that duplicative time was spent reviewing 

a discovery-related letter (2e) and therefore cuts 0.4 of the 0.9 hours charged 

under that heading. 

• On counsel's preparation of the second motion for summary judgment after 

defendants were allowed to withdraw their admissions, the Court agrees with 

defendants that certain of the time re-charged simply involved copying points 

from the original motion (2f). This time is not reasonably charged to defendants 

again, irrespective of the fact that their conduct required the do-over. The Court 

reduces counsel's time by 6.4 hours on this basis (1.3 + 0.9 + 1.5 + 1.2 + 1.5). 

The remaining time objected to, however, does not appear to be duplicative. 

Rather, it represents tasks accomplished over a period of days rather than all at 

once. 

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• Finally, the Court is unpersuaded that counsel performed duplicative work in 

responding to defendants' bona fide error argument (2g)

Points 3a-m

• The Court agrees that the time claimed of 6.1 hours on more-or-less standard 

form discovery requests is unreasonably high (point 3a) and reduces it by onethird, eliminating 2.0 hours of counsel's time. 

• Plaintiff's counsel charged a total of a little over 27 hours for researching and 

filing plaintiff's first motion for summary judgment (3b & 3c). Having re-reviewed 

the motion and supporting materials, as well as counsel's time records, the Court 

likewise finds this time excessive and reduces it by one-third, eliminating 9.0 

hours of counsel's time, not the larger reduction sought by defendants. 

• By contrast, the time counsel seeks for doing research for and preparation of the 

refiled summary judgment motion after defendants persuaded the Court to 

withdraw their admission (3d & 3e) was reasonably necessary (aside from the 

reduction under point 2f above), and the Court overrules defendants' objections 

to that time. 

• The Court likewise agrees with plaintiff's counsel that the time charged for 

motions to amend the complaint and preparations of the amendments (3f) was 

reasonable and properly justified. 

• The same is true of the time charged for the motion to strike defendants' answer 

(3g). The Court is unpersuaded that this was a boilerplate form requiring less 

than one-half hour of counsel's time, as defendants contend. 

• The Court agrees that the time spent preparing two materially identical 

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subpoenas for third party records (3h) is excessive and cuts it by one-half, 

eliminating 0.9 hours of counsel's time. 

• The same is true of the time spent preparing a letter regarding discovery disputes 

(3i), for which counsel charged 3.0 hours on November 12, 2013 and 3.1 hours 

the following day. Half of that time is sufficient, so the Court eliminates 3.0 

hours. 

• The Court agrees with defendants that the time spent preparing deposition 

notices (3j), which are basically fill-in-the-blank forms, is excessive and therefore 

cuts two-thirds of that time, eliminating 1.9 hours. 

• The Court overrules defendants' objections to the time charged for researching 

amendments to the complaint (3k); this is sufficiently justified and was not 

unreasonably spent.

• The Court also agrees that time should be cut from the amount billed for 

reviewing this district's standard-form protective order (3l) and eliminates 0.6 

hours, two-thirds of the time charged. 

• Finally, the Court overrules defendants' objections to certain miscellaneous 

entries (3), which plaintiff's counsel has properly justified and which were neither 

excessive nor duplicative.

The reductions described above amount to 3.1 hours of counsel's time and 1.0 

hours of law clerk time under heading 1; 8.4 hours of counsel's time under heading 2; 

and 17.4 hours of counsel's time under heading 3. The total reductions are 28.9 hours 

of counsel's time and 1.0 hours of law clerk time. The Court approves plaintiff's

requested expenses, to which defendants have interposed no objection.

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The resulting fee award likely will be a bit over $100,000. It may seem 

incongruous to seek a fee award of over $115,000 for a claim whose maximum value 

was $1,000. It would be even more incongruous however, to allow defendants to 

litigate the case to the hilt and then successfully argue that plaintiff should have 

prosecuted it more cheaply. See, e.g., Barrow v. Falck, 977 F.2d 1100, 1104 (7th Cir. 

1992); see also City of Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561, 581 n.11 (1986) (a defendant 

"cannot litigate tenaciously and then be heard to complain about the time necessarily 

spent by the plaintiff in response.").

Even though plaintiff did not prevail on all of his claims, he obtained complete 

success: a judgment in his favor and the maximum statutory award. There is no basis 

to believe, and defendants do not argue, that plaintiff could have recovered more than 

$1,000 whether he won on one, two, or five claims. And given the uncertainties of 

litigation, the Court cannot say that it was unreasonable for plaintiff to prosecute each of 

his claims for relief, though they all led to the same end. In sum, the Court sees no 

appropriate basis to reduce the fee award beyond the reductions it has already 

approved.

Conclusion

The Court grants plaintiff's motion for attorney's fees and costs [dkt. no. 163] for 

the reasons stated above, with certain reductions as the Court has described. Because 

counsel's reasonable hourly rate changed over the course of the litigation, the 

reductions ordered by the Court will require a bit of work to recalculate the fee award. 

Plaintiff's counsel is directed to recalculate the award consistent with this decision and is 

to submit the proposed recalculation to defendants by no later than May 7, 2015. 

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Defendants are to respond to plaintiff's recalculation by no later than May 12, 2015. A 

joint status report summarizing the proposed recalculation and any objections is to be 

filed by no later than May 15, 2015.

Date: May 3, 2015 ________________________________

MATTHEW F. KENNELLY

 United States District Judge

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