# United States Court of Appeals For the First C ircuit

No. 04-2236 FIRST STATE INSURANCE GROUP, Plaintiff, Appellee,

v. NATIONWIDE MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY,

Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS [Hon. Richard G. Stearns, U.S. District Judge ]
Before Boudin, Chief Judge , Lynch and Lipez, Circuit Judges .
Michael L. Cohen with whom Michael J. Pollack , Cohen & Buckley LLP , Arnold Greenhut and Rosen Greenhut Catuogno & Lowwere on brief for appellant. Lloyd A. Gura with whom Lawrence S. Greengrass , Sanjit Shah , Mound Cotton Wollan & Greengrass and Prince, Lobel, Glovsky & Tye LLP were on brief for appellee.

March 23, 2005-2- PerCuriam . Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company (“Nationwide”) appeals from the district court’s order denying an awardof attorneys’ fees. Nationwide and another insurance company, Employers Insurance of Wausau (“Wausa u ”), prevailed in bringing emergency motions against First S tate Insurance Group (“First State”) in the district court. They secured an order enjoining First State from pursuing its requests in a number of
ar bitr ations to have those disputes consolidated into just two arbitrations. Viewing First State’s requests to the arbitrators as
c ontravening the court’s prior rulings, the court ordered tha t First State pay Wausau’s and Nationwide’s costs and attorneys’ fees in bringing the emergency motions “in a reasonable amount to be determined by the court on the parties’ submissions.”

Wausau sought reimbursement of $46,312.47; Nationwide sought $89,012.82. The distri ct c ourt disallowed certain of Wausau’s expenses and fees and concluded that $35,101 was a reasonable award. Viewing Nationwide’s request as grossly excessive for the amount of work involved, the court declined to make any award to it. The cour t then denied Nationwide’s motion for reconsideration, which was accompanied byan application for a somewhat reduced fee. Nationwide now appeals from the denials of fees. We revie w aw ards (and denials of awards) of attorneys’ fees for abus e of discretion. See Mullane v. Chambers , 333 F.3d1 Although they are not applicable here, there are some

statutes governing the award of att orneys’ fees that may provide district courts with less discretion to deny fees. See, e.g. , De Je sus v. Banco Popular de P.R. , 918 F.2d 232, 233-34 (1st C ir . 1990) (Truth in Lending Act). -3- 322, 337-38 (1st Cir. 2003); New Eng. Reg’l Council of Carpenters
v. Kinton , 284 F.3d 9, 30 (1st Cir. 2002). Where the attorneys’ fees requested are unreasonably excessive, it is within a court’s discretion to denyfees entirely. See Lewis v. Kendrick , 944 F.2d 949, 958 (1st Cir. 1991) ; Bro wn v. Stackler , 612 F.2d 1057, 1059 (7th Cir. 1980). 1 The court’s order may be read to overstate the degree to which Nationwide’s and Wausau’s papers in support of their emergency motions were duplicative. Neverth eless , after reviewing the record, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion by finding Nationwide’s fee request to be so excessive as to merit outright denial of any fee.

Nationwide’s request sought approximately $60,000 of compensa tion f or the work its counsel performed on its emergency motion in the district court. The ultimate product of these efforts were two (opening and reply) memoranda total ing ab out 34 pages in length, and attendance and argument at a short hearing. Relatedfilings in the arbitration proceedings, local counsel fees, andexpenses for travel to attend the hearing brought the total up to nearly $90,000. Litigation may be expensive but this bill, for
a sing le narrow dispute about a prior order of the court, is-4-

excessive by more than a small margin--or so the district court could reasonably conclude.

Nor did the district court abuse its discret ion, see Douglas v. York County , 360 F.3 d 286, 29 0 (1st Cir. 2004), in denying Nationwide’s motion for reconsideration even if we assume dubitante tha t t he somewhat reduced fee request was not a reasonable order. A fee application may not be used as “an opening gambit in negotiations to reach an ultimate result.” Lewis , 944 F.2d at 958.

Affirmed.