Note: Decisions of a three-justice panel are not to be considered as precedent before any tribunal. 

ENTRY ORDER

SUPREME COURT DOCKET NO. 2012-469

APRIL TERM, 2013

Becky P. Nystrom, Scott Nystrom and 

Laurie Nystrom

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APPEALED FROM:

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} Superior Court, Windham Unit,

 v. } Civil Division

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Casey J. Hafford } DOCKET NO. 566-10-10 Wmcv

Trial Judge: John P. Wesley

In the above-entitled cause, the Clerk will enter:

Defendant Casey Hafford appeals pro se from the trial court’s order, following a remand, 

that denied his request for attorney’s fees. We affirm.

The facts underlying this dispute are set forth in Nystrom v. Hafford, 2012 VT 60. 

Briefly restated, plaintiff Becky Nystrom sought to partition real property that she jointly owned 

with defendant. Defendant moved to join Becky’s parents in the action as they had advanced 

labor, materials, and money to construct the house in question. Parents then raised claims 

against defendant for breach of contract and unjust enrichment, and father raised a claim under 

the Prompt Pay Act (PPA). Following a bench trial, the court assigned Becky the property 

contingent on her paying defendant a certain sum. The court rejected father’s PPA claim for 

payment for his work on the house, but entered judgment in parents’ favor for $33,048 they had 

contributed out-of-pocket for the project. It denied defendant’s request for attorney’s fees.

In his first appeal, defendant argued that he was entitled to attorney’s fees under the PPA. 

We remanded to the trial court for the limited purpose of considering defendant’s attorney’s fee 

claim. In reaching our conclusion, we found that father’s PPA claim was based solely on his 

labor in constructing the house, and that the remaining claims in the case did not arise from a 

common core of facts. We indicated that, on remand, the “trial court should make a reasonable 

effort to award [defendant] legal fees associated with father’s PPA claim for reimbursement for 

labor in connection with the construction project, as well as any other claims by father resting on 

the same core set of facts.” Id. ¶ 25. 

The trial court directed defendant to present his claim for attorney’s fees with references 

to the record to support the claimed amount. Defendant filed a short response, and included an

affidavit from his trial attorney and counsel’s itemized billings from January 1, 2011 through 

August 31, 2012, totaling $46,579.50. According to counsel, defendant estimated that at least 

75% of the total bill, or $37,469.85, was directly attributable to the successful defense of father’s

PPA claim and related claims for his labor because they involved a majority of the counts in 

plaintiffs’ amended complaint, they hindered the settlement of the case at mediation, and they 

complicated the case thereafter. Father challenged the sufficiency of defendant’s filing, arguing 
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that defendant failed to cite a single reference in the record directly related to the PPA claim and 

that he thereby failed to comply with the court’s order. Father maintained that it was not his 

burden to search counsel’s billings or decipher the entries for references to the defense of the 

PPA claim, or specific references to parents. Father indicated that $2276 in attorney’s fees might 

be appropriate, but he nonetheless asked court to deny defendant’s claim for lack of any 

demonstrated support in the record. 

Defendant filed a supplemental memorandum in support of attorney’s fees, but he offered 

no further specificity as to which items of the billings he claimed to be directly related to the 

defense of the PPA claim, or any other aspect of the case concerning father’s claim for the value 

of his labor. Defendant did not respond to father’s suggestion that $2276 in fees might be 

supportable. Instead, defendant asserted that it was “difficult, if not impossible, to say with 

mathematical certainty how much time was due solely to [father’s] labor claims.” He maintained 

that “all the claims arose from the same common core of facts concerning the costs of 

construction of the house and whether there was a gift made in contemplation of marriage.” 

The court found that defendant failed to establish his entitlement to fees. His claim for 

75% of counsel’s fees was wholly unsupported by any reference to the record. He made no 

effort to relate his analysis to any of the contemporaneous records of his invoices for legal 

services provided. He did not supply a trial transcript or any deposition transcripts to bolster his 

claim that the substantial portion of the evidence related to a common core of facts associated 

with the PPA count. Instead, his analysis appeared to be confined to the observation that the 

requested award was reasonable because a majority of the claims in the amended complaint 

involved father’s claims for funds advanced for construction and his labor, and that the amount 

of his claim for labor far exceeded the other amounts claimed by the parties. The court found 

this logic unpersuasive, particularly as it had no support in the record. The court also rejected 

defendant’s assertion that it “could in fact award him all of his attorney’s fees due to the 

common core of facts.” The court found this assertion directly contrary to this Court’s opinion. 

See id. ¶ 22. 

In reaching its conclusion, the court recognized that defendant did not need to support his 

claim with absolute mathematical precision, and that some degree of approximation was likely 

inescapable. Nonetheless, defendant’s extravagant claim made in apparent derogation of this 

Court’s opinion, as well as trial court’s prior characterization of the allocation of trial time, 

afforded no rational framework for further refinement of his fee petition except by resort to rank 

guesswork. The court noted that defendant did not endorse father’s suggested approach as to 

which billings might be attributable to the defense of the PPA claim, and it declined to find that 

defendant could meet his burden of proof through father’s speculative suggestions. Defendant

was required to establish a reasonable basis from which the court could make a determination of 

fees. Because he offered no approach other than the unsupported and unreasonable estimate of 

75% of the total billing, the court denied his claim. This appeal followed. 

On appeal, defendant argues that he offered adequate support for his fee request. He 

maintains, as he did below, that father’s claim for his labor hindered the case from the beginning. 

He states that he is entitled to an award of attorney’s fees as a matter of law. Defendant also 

suggests that the court could have used the lodestar analysis to determine attorney’s fees. 

Defendant asks that he be awarded $37,469.85 or, alternatively, all of his attorney’s fees. 

We find no error in the court’s decision. See Fletcher Hill, Inc. v. Crosbie, 2005 VT 1, 

¶ 3, 178 Vt. 77 (Supreme Court reviews “trial court’s ruling on attorney’s fees . . . for abuse of 

discretion). As set forth above, defendant failed to provide the trial court with any reasonable 
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basis from which to determine an appropriate attorney’s fee award. His claim for 75% of his 

total fees was unreasonable and not supported by any specific references to the record. His 

general assertion that father’s claim for his labor “hindered the case from the beginning” does 

not suffice. As we made clear in our prior decision in this case, moreover, father’s claim for 

labor did not share a common core of facts with the principal claims in the case. See Nystrom, 

2012 VT 60, ¶ 22. The lodestar approach is of no avail because the court had no way to 

determine the number of hours reasonably expended by counsel in response to father’s claim for 

labor. See L’Esperance v. Benware, 2003 VT 43, ¶ 22, 175 Vt. 292 (stating that, in determining 

the reasonableness of a fee award, courts must begin with the lodestar figure, which is the 

number of hours reasonably expended on the case multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate). To be 

entitled to attorney’s fees, defendant needed to provide the court with some mechanism by which 

it could ascertain a reasonable award, and he failed to do so here. His fee request was therefore 

properly denied.

Affirmed.

BY THE COURT:

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John A. Dooley, Associate Justice

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Brian L. Burgess, Associate Justice

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Beth Robinson, Associate Justice