Opinion ID: 4519852
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Hours Reasonably Expended in Litigation

Text: When a plaintiff prevails in a FLSA action, the district court “shall, in addition to any judgment awarded to the plaintiff or plaintiffs, allow a reasonable attorney’s fee to be paid by the defendant, and costs of the action.” 29 U.S.C. § 216(b). The first step in calculating a reasonable attorney's fee award is to determine the “lodestar”—the product of multiplying reasonable hours expended times a reasonable hourly rate. Am. Civil Liberties Union of Ga. v. Barnes, 168 F.3d 423, 427 (11th Cir. 1999). The district court here found that (1) Plaintiffs’ attorneys worked the hours they claimed; (2) the claimed hourly rates were within the range customarily charged in the district; and (3) the claimed expenses would ordinarily be passed on to the client as part of the billing for attorney’s fees. However, Molina argued the number of hours reported by Plaintiffs’ attorneys were wholly unreasonable, and it maintains on appeal the district court abused its discretion in calculating the lodestar based on those reported hours. 11 Case: 19-13965 Date Filed: 03/26/2020 Page: 12 of 21 Molina points to counsel’s failure to participate in early mediation, the repeated rafts of what Molina characterizes as unnecessary discovery, and unnecessary billing, which Molina attributes to “duplicative efforts in various phases of the litigation.” The district court considered and rejected these same arguments below, and we find it acted well within its discretion in doing so. See Kelly, 888 F.2d at 745. As to Plaintiffs’ supposed refusal to mediate, Molina takes issue with Plaintiffs’ resistance to Molina’s efforts to consolidate the instant litigation with a similar class action pending in the Northern District of Illinois. The district court noted that Plaintiffs’ counsel had achieved better results than those in the Illinois litigation, finding the Illinois litigation resulted in a recovery of just under 25% as much per employee. The district court declined to penalize Plaintiffs’ counsel for “work[ing] harder and obtain[ing] for their clients a multiple of the amount recovered in Illinois.” Molina dismisses the district court’s reasoning as “perfunctory” and insists the benefit to Plaintiffs and the class members of separately litigating their claims was marginal. But we find the district court’s explanation sufficient, and we cannot say that its rejection of Molina’s argument constitutes a clear error in judgment. See Kelly, 888 F.2d at 745. Plaintiffs certainly could have opted to consolidate their claims with those in the related Illinois litigation, but they were 12 Case: 19-13965 Date Filed: 03/26/2020 Page: 13 of 21 under no obligation to do so, and we, like the district court, see no reason to penalize counsel for choosing to litigate their clients’ claims separately. The district court also rejected Molina’s assertion that Plaintiffs’ discovery requests were unnecessary and unreasonable, an assertion fundamentally premised on Molina’s contention that there was never any dispute as to liability. Because Molina conceded liability, it argues, Plaintiffs’ discovery requests concerning, for example, Molina’s alleged misclassification of the class members was unjustified as was any time spent preparing those requests. In rejecting this argument, the district court noted that, while Molina did indeed admit liability, it did not admit willfulness, so the merits of its decision not to pay overtime remained an issue in the litigation. The district court acknowledged that Plaintiffs had withdrawn certain discovery requests and may have pursued some lines of inquiry that were not, at the end of the day, relevant. But, on the whole, the district court found counsel’s conduct to be “reasonable, well-intentioned, and successful.” We find the district court’s explanation sensible. Molina’s characterization of the nature of the dispute in the district court (i.e., that the only issue was the number of overtime hours worked) is an oversimplification. For one, it simply is not the case that there was never any dispute as to liability. Molina maintained, in both its answer and the subsequent Rule 26(f) report, that Plaintiffs and all members of the putative class were at all 13 Case: 19-13965 Date Filed: 03/26/2020 Page: 14 of 21 relevant times properly classified. It was not until the July 2017 teleconference that Molina formally conceded liability, and, notably, a not insignificant portion of the three rounds of discovery requests Molina now points to as unnecessary were issued prior to that formal concession. Moreover, as the district court recognized, Molina did not admit willfulness, an issue that could have affected the ultimate damages award. See 29 U.S.C. § 255(a) (providing for an extended three-year limitations period where a cause of action arises out of a willful violation); 29 U.S.C. § 260 (permitting a court to “award no liquidated damages” where an employer shows it “had reasonable grounds for believing that [its] act or omission was not a violation of the [FLSA]”). With regard to counsel’s “unnecessary billing,” Molina points to the presence of multiple attorneys at depositions and to general “duplicative efforts in various phases of the litigation.” The district court was not persuaded that the presence of multiple attorneys at depositions merited an adjustment in the number of reasonable hours expended. After noting Molina itself was represented by three attorneys of record, the district court explained that it was entirely rational to assign more than a single attorney to a substantial case such as this one. Even so, the district court, after carefully reviewing the time records submitted by Plaintiffs’ counsel, concluded an adjustment for duplication was in order. Accordingly, the 14 Case: 19-13965 Date Filed: 03/26/2020 Page: 15 of 21 district court’s order made a 50-hour adjustment for one specific attorney and a 2% across-the-board adjustment for all timekeepers. Molina asks us to find the district court’s adjustment insufficient, but we decline to substitute our judgment for that of the district court judge in the absence of some clear indication in the record that there was unnecessarily duplicative billing beyond that already accounted for in the lodestar calculation. The mere fact that multiple attorneys were assigned to the case or attended depositions does not, on its own, make counsel’s claimed hours unreasonable. While we have in the past recognized “the possibility of unnecessary duplication,” “[a]n award for time spent by two or more attorneys is proper as long as it reflects the distinct contribution of each lawyer to the case.” Johnson v. Univ. Coll. of Univ. of Ala. in Birmingham, 706 F.2d 1205, 1208 (11th Cir. 1983). Notably, Molina has not identified—either in its briefing here or before the district court—the particular hours it believed were duplicative or should have been disallowed beyond asserting that multiple attorneys were present at depositions. Instead, Molina simply asserts that “counsels’ billing records evidence multiple instances of duplicative efforts” and generally points to time billed for “screening class members, preparing notices of opt-ins, and drafting disclosures and written discovery responses.” Molina, as the party opposing the fee application, had an obligation to identify the hours that should be excluded 15 Case: 19-13965 Date Filed: 03/26/2020 Page: 16 of 21 with some degree of specificity. See Barnes, 168 F.3d at 428 (“Those opposing fee applications have obligations, too. In order for courts to carry out their duties in this area, ‘objections and proof from fee opponents’ concerning hours that should be excluded must be specific and ‘reasonably precise.’” (quoting Norman v. Housing Auth. of Montgomery, 836 F.2d 1292, 1301 (11th Cir. 1988))); see also Norman, 836 F.2d at 1301 (“Generalized statements that the time spent was reasonable or unreasonable of course are not particularly helpful and not entitled to much weight.”). For example, we have reversed a district court’s fee award where defendants, in opposition to the plaintiffs’ fee application, filed “a chart with colorcoded categorization of the requesting attorneys’ time sheets detailing what the defendants alleged were excessive, unreasonable, and duplicative hours included in the application.” Barnes, 168 F.3d at 426–27. Having concluded the district court’s lodestar calculation was proper, we now address Molina’s claim the district court abused its discretion in declining to further adjust the lodestar to reflect a reasonable overall fee.