Opinion ID: 201895
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Fee Dispute

Text: 7 On May 21, 2003, LEC, having prevailed on the merits, filed a timely motion requesting costs and attorney's fees in accordance with the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 505. 3 On March 8, 2004, the district court issued an order denying LEC's motion, without prejudice of being resubmitted with satisfactory evidence, in addition to LEC's attorneys' own affidavits, justifying the reasonableness of its requested rate for attorney's fees. On March 16, 2004, LEC filed a motion for an enlargement of time, requesting an additional thirty days (until April 22, 2004) to submit the requested evidence on the reasonableness of its rate for attorney fees. In docketing LEC's motion for an enlargement of time, the district court set a deadline of March 29, 2004, for the filing of any response in opposition from appellants. Appellants filed no such response. 8 On April 21, 2004, one day before the requested deadline of April 22, 2004, LEC submitted additional evidence concerning the reasonableness of its attorney's fees rates to the district court. On May 11, 2004, appellants for the first time raised a timeliness challenge to the attorney's fees request. Appellants also reiterated a series of other objections to the request for fees and costs, arguing, inter alia, that the award was not warranted under the factors set forth in the Supreme Court's decision in Fogerty v. Fantasy, 510 U.S. 517, 114 S.Ct. 1023, 127 L.Ed.2d 455 (1994); that the rates charged were unreasonable; and that LEC improperly incurred translation costs after the district court dismissed the action. 9 On November 12, 2004, the district court ordered García-Goyco to pay LEC $13,721.82 in costs and $98,000.00 in attorney's fees. The district court noted that [p]laintiffs . . . contend that attorney's fees are not warranted in this case because the Court never stated nor relied on any finding that García-Goyco's claim was frivolous or that plaintiffs filed their action in bad faith. The court found that copyrighting the[ ] documents was done in bad faith in order to leverage LEC's cooperation in hiring [García-Goyco] [and that] further use of the copyrights to bootstrap a state law contract action into federal court wasted an immeasurable amount of this Court's time as well as causing inappropriate and unnecessary legal expenses for LEC. This appeal followed. Our review as to the issue of jurisdiction is plenary. We review the district court's award of costs and attorney's fees for abuse of discretion. Invessys, Inc. v. McGraw-Hill Cos., Ltd., 369 F.3d 16, 19 (1st Cir.2004).