Opinion ID: 2314990
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Number of Hours

Text: The RHC may exercise its discretion to decrease the number of compensable hours in the lodestar calculation [w]here the documentation of hours is inadequate and to exclude from [the] initial fee calculation hours that were not `reasonably expended or that are excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary.... Hensley, supra, 461 U.S. at 433-34, 103 S.Ct. at 1939-40. Moreover, the RHC itself, in an opinion intended to designate precisely what it would require in making future attorney fee determinations, stated that a reasonable number of hours is not necessarily the raw, gross figure that the firm's documentation depicts, but rather the number of hours an attorney skilled in the specialized field of rental housing would claim in the exercise of billing judgment. Reid v. Sinclair, supra note 8, at 16-17. According to these principles, the RHC did not err here in adjusting the number of compensable hours downward to 51.25 since, within its discretion, it made multiple findings both that counsel provided inadequate substantiation of his hours and that the hours charged were far in excess of what reasonably skilled counsel expend for similar work in rental housing litigation according to its extensive past experience with attorney services in the rental housing area. [11]