Opinion ID: 2711586
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Main Fee Petition

Text: As we earlier described, Strawn has filed a series of petitions and supplemental petitions seeking attorney fees to be paid in part by Farmers and in part from the punitive damages awarded to the class. We consider each of those petitions, and the issues that they raise, in turn, beginning with Strawn’s main fee petition. 9 As Conte observes: “A common-fund fee award that does not consider the amount of the fund produced as the controlling guideline in setting a reasonable fee under prevailing market conditions runs afoul of the economics and practicalities of a plaintiff-litigation practice.” 1 Attorney Fee Awards § 2:7 at 105. Cite as 353 Or 210 (2013) 223
Strawn’s main petition for attorney fees requests fees for work done in seeking review by this court, in resisting Farmers’s petition for review, and in briefing the merits on both petitions. In that petition, Strawn presents billings listing the number of hours worked on those stages of the case, multiplies those hours by the billing rates for the attorneys and other staff who worked them, and calculates a base lodestar accordingly. Strawn then argues for adjustment of that lodestar through a multiplier, principally to compensate his attorneys for the contingent nature of any fee they would receive, which in turn entailed the risk of nonpayment and delay in receiving any fee from either the common fund or Farmers. Farmers challenges some of the discrete billings by Strawn’s attorneys, arguing that they are for work that the attorneys either should not have performed or for which they should not have billed. With one exception, we reject those challenges without further discussion. The exception is a $575 charge for 2.5 hours that an attorney spent driving to and from Salem to deliver replacement pages for Strawn’s response brief, which Strawn now concedes are not allowable. We agree with Strawn’s concession and, accordingly, we have deducted the amount of that billing from all figures in this opinion. Farmers’s more significant challenge is to the reasonableness of the overall time spent by Strawn’s attorneys on the briefing and other work involved in litigating the case at this court’s level. In total, for work done after the Court of Appeals decision and until this court issued its opinion, Strawn’s attorneys spent a total of 1,252.55 hours. For those hours of work, Strawn seeks a base fee award of $412,807.00. In addition, Strawn asks this court to apply multipliers to the base amounts, resulting in a total requested fee of $760,063.12 for work done on review to this court.10 10 Strawn applies different multipliers for the fee-shifting and common-fund awards that he seeks (1.6 times amounts attributed to the fee-shifting award, and 2.0 times amounts attributed to the common-fund award). We later discuss how the hours are apportioned between the two fee categories. We omit that information here, however, because including it would unnecessarily complicate the process of determining whether the total number of hours incurred was reasonable. 224 Strawn v. Farmers Ins. Co. In response, Farmers does not challenge the hourly rates claimed by Strawn’s counsel, but it does challenge the reasonableness of the number of hours. See ORS 20.075(2)(a) (requiring court to consider the amount of time required by the case, given the difficulty of the questions involved and the skill necessary). In support of that challenge, Farmers offers the testimony of an expert that 614.3 hours would have been reasonable for the work done before this court, for a total fee award of $202,719. Farmers also opposes the use of any multipliers to the base fee award. We have evaluated the factors prescribed by ORS 20.075,11 and we agree with Farmers that those factors do not support the amount of fees that Strawn requests. In particular, we have considered the novelty, difficulty, and skill needed to perform the legal services required of the case on review by this court. In that regard, we have taken into account the fact that the issues had been previously and extensively briefed at the Court of Appeals level, that Strawn’s attorneys were already intimately familiar with the record, and that many of the issues turned on fairly narrow procedural points that were neither novel or unusually 11 ORS 20.075(2) directs the court to consider the following factors in determining the amount of fees to be awarded: “(a) The time and labor required in the proceeding, the novelty and difficulty of the questions involved in the proceeding and the skill needed to properly perform the legal services. “(b) The likelihood, if apparent to the client, that the acceptance of the particular employment by the attorney would preclude the attorney from taking other cases. “(c) The fee customarily charged in the locality for similar legal services. “(d) The amount involved in the controversy and the results obtained. “(e) The time limitations imposed by the client or the circumstances of the case. “(f) The nature and length of the attorney’s professional relationship with the client. “(g) The experience, reputation and ability of the attorney performing the services. “(h) Whether the fee of the attorney is fixed or contingent.” Subsection (2) of ORS 20.075 requires the court to consider, in addition, “the factors specified in subsection (1).” Subsection (1) lists factors that ordinarily are considered in deciding whether to make a discretionary award of fees. We do not list those factors here, because we conclude that they do not inform the proper disposition of this particular fee petition. Cite as 353 Or 210 (2013) 225 difficult (such as preservation).12 The case was complex, but not unusually so for a civil case involving such a large damages award, and not as complex as many cases that come before this court. In our view, the approach that both parties took to the case complicated it more than necessary and the court was less aided by the parties’ advocacy as a result. See generally Chalmers v. Oregon Auto. Ins. Co., 263 Or 449, 455-56, 502 P2d 1378 (1972) (in determining reasonable attorney fee, court considers assistance provided by party seeking fee, including efficiency of briefing and helpfulness of advocacy). Strawn, as the party seeking an award of fees, has the burden of establishing the reasonableness of the fee amount that he requests. Hillsboro v. Maint. & Const. Serv., 269 Or 169, 172, 523 P2d 1036 (1974) (where opposing party objects to attorney fee request, burden of proving reasonableness of fees rests on party seeking them). We have considered Strawn’s arguments in favor of the number of hours his attorneys expended (1,252.22) as against the estimate by Farmers’s expert of a reasonable number of hours for the work done at this court’s level (614.3 hours). We are persuaded by Farmers’s expert.13 Multiplied by the average rate of $330 per hour charged by Strawn’s attorneys,14 we conclude that a reasonable lodestar fee for the work done on review to this court is $202,719. 12 As the Court of Appeals aptly observed in its opinion awarding attorney fees in this case for the work done on appeal: “Appellate work is not identical to trial work. As the prevailing party at trial and the respondent on appeal, plaintiffs were entitled to certain favorable standards of review. The prosecution of the case at trial was more risky than the defense of the judgments on appeal. In addition, plaintiffs’ efforts in arguing from a closed record on appeal cannot be equated with their efforts in creating that record at trial.” Strawn, 233 Or App at 417. 13 We have reviewed the attorney fee orders that this court has awarded from the year 2000 forward. Strawn’s requested amount of fees appears unprecedented. Equally unprecedented would be an award at the reduced amount that Farmers’s expert identified as reasonable. Although that fact is not determinative, it does have legitimate bearing, especially given that this case is not the high water mark of complex cases coming to this court. 14 Farmers’s expert relied on that average rate to calculate a reasonable fee based on the total hours that he concluded would have been reasonable to devote to the work involved. Although Strawn, in response, took issue with the expert’s opinion on the reasonableness of the hours devoted to the case, Strawn did not take issue with the average hourly rate that the expert used. 226 Strawn v. Farmers Ins. Co.
ORS 20.075(2)(h) directs a court, in setting a reasonable attorney fee, to consider whether the attorney fee is fixed or contingent. Strawn relies on ORS 20.075(2)(h) as supporting an enhanced award in this case through the use of a multiplier. He contends, essentially, that a mere hourly award would compensate his attorneys significantly below the amount that they would receive if they were paid on a contingent fee basis, thus failing to account for the risk that his attorneys incurred agreeing to undertake the case.15 In support, Strawn compares the amount of attorney fees already awarded by the trial court and Court of Appeals to the amount that his counsel would have been entitled to receive under the terms of the contingent fee agreement that Strawn and his attorneys negotiated. The contingent fee agreement with Strawn (as class representative) entitles his attorneys to a percentage of the “gross recovery to all class members”—50 percent if the case goes to appeal.16 Strawn asserts that the gross recovery for the class is $12,114,305, which consists of the general judgment of $8,900,000, plus fee-shifting attorney fee awards against Farmers of $2,670,000 by the trial court and $544,305 by the Court of Appeals. Strawn asserts that the attorney fees awarded to date are only 31 percent of that gross recovery—well below the 50 percent provided in the contingency fee agreement. 15 As Conte explains: “It is axiomatic that attorneys who work on a contingent-fee basis must charge a higher fee than those who work on a noncontingent-fee basis, to compensate them for the risk of loss and the risk of receiving no compensation for services rendered and to permit them to earn an income that would be competitive with colleague who get paid, win or lose.” 1 Attorney Fee Awards § 1:8 at 23-24 (footnote omitted). Neither party in this case has explored the legislative history of ORS 20.075(2)(h) to determine whether, as Strawn assumes, the legislature intended that provision to authorize a multiplier to account for contingency. For present purposes, we may assume, without deciding, that it does, because (as we later explain) we conclude that the fees awarded are reasonable without any multiplier. In this case, therefore, it suffices to note that courts that have used the lodestar methodology to determine a reasonable fee have divided over the question of how any enhancement to the lodestar for contingent fee cases should be calculated, a division illustrated by the three opinions in Pennsylvania v. Del. Valley Citizens’ Council, 483 US 711, 107 S Ct 3078, 97 L Ed 2d 585 (1987). 16 More specifically, the fee agreement entitles counsel to the greater of 50 percent of the class recovery or the fees actually awarded by the court. Cite as 353 Or 210 (2013) 227 As we earlier noted, that comparison by Strawn invites a percent-of-fund method of calculating the attorney fee as a check on the lodestar calculation. And as we have already explained, such an approach seems particularly appropriate in this case, because this litigation resulted in a significant common fund for which a percent-of-fund approach is generally considered to be an appropriate way to calculate a reasonable attorney fee. Strawn’s calculation, however, reflects three significant errors. First, Strawn incorrectly includes the fee-shifting attorney fee awards as part of the gross recovery subject to the contingent fee. Doing so amounts to a form of doublecounting. The client would be charged a percentage of not only the fund recovered under the judgment, but also an added percentage based on the attorney fees that the attorney will recover from the other side. Because of that double-counting problem, fee-shifting attorney fee awards may not be considered as part of the gross recovery subject to a contingent fee, at least in the absence of a specific fee agreement to the contrary. See Chalmers, 263 Or at 453-54 (noting possibility of holding that fee-shifting award could “be added to the amount of the judgment in determining the total amount of recovery subject to the contingent fee percentage,” but rejecting such a rule absent a specifically negotiated fee agreement that so provides).17 The fee agreement in this case, which is part of the record, does not 17 Chalmers noted the “basic unfairness” to a client who expects the attorney to be fully paid by the contingent fee, only to learn that the attorney will claim both the contingent fee and a fee awarded by the court. 263 Or at 454. The court recognized that an attorney and client might (subject to the attorney’s ethical obligations) negotiate a fee agreement to calculate the fee in that or some other way, because an agreement would not create any surprise or unfairness. Id. In the absence of a specific provision, however, any fee-shifting award must be credited against the amounts due under the contingency fee agreement: “If    the contingent fee agreement makes no specific reference to any possible attorney fee which may be awarded by the court and makes no specific provision for the manner in which any such fee is to be considered in computing the amount, source, and manner of distribution of the contingent fee, we hold that any attorney fee awarded by the court shall be offset as a credit or deduction from the amount of the agreed contingent fee, as computed upon the basis of the amount of the judgment.” Id. If the fee-shifting award is large enough, then the client would be entitled to the full amount of the judgment, despite the contingent fee agreement. Id. at 45455. 228 Strawn v. Farmers Ins. Co. provide for the contingent fee to be calculated by adding any fee-shifting award to the damages. We conclude, then, that the fee-shifting attorney fee awards made in this case should not be included in the total recovery for purposes of calculating the contingent fee. Instead, the contingent fee applies only to the total damages (compensatory plus interest, and punitive damages) awarded to the class based on the jury’s verdict: $8,900,000. So calculated, the amount of attorney fees that Strawn’s attorneys have received to date (that is, at trial and before the Court of Appeals) is not 31 percent, as Strawn claims. It is, instead, 42 percent. The second error is that Strawn’s calculations fail to reflect the statutory limit on the contingent fee that could be collected in this case. The class was awarded $900,000 in compensatory damages and $8 million in punitive damages, for a total of $8.9 million. Strawn assumes that the contingent fee would be half of that, or $4.45 million. But the legislature, by statute, has limited the contingent fee that may be paid from a punitive damages award. Specifically, under former ORS 18.540(1)(a) (1999),18 no more than 20 percent of a punitive damages award may be awarded to a plaintiff’s counsel as attorney fees. In this case, the maximum contingent fee amount payable to Strawn’s counsel from the punitive damages award would be $1.6 million. That amount, added to half the compensatory damages ($450,000), equals $2,050,000. That figure—slightly over $2 million—represents the largest contingent fee that, consistently with former ORS 18.540(1)(b) (1999), Strawn’s attorneys could have received from the class recovery for litigating this case, notwithstanding the negotiated fee agreement. Necessarily, Former ORS 18.540(1)(a) (1999) provided, in part: 18 “Forty percent [of the award of punitive damages] shall be paid to the prevailing party. The attorney for the prevailing party shall be paid out of the amount allocated under this paragraph, in the amount agreed upon between the attorney and the prevailing party. However, in no event may more than 20 percent of the amount awarded as punitive damages be paid to the attorney for the prevailing party.” Former ORS 18.540 (1999) has since been renumbered as ORS 31.735 and was amended in 2011. Or Laws 2011, ch 689, § 1; Or Laws 2011, ch 597, § 311. Those amendments are not relevant to the disposition of this case. Cite as 353 Or 210 (2013) 229 then, it is also the “reasonable market expectation” that Strawn’s attorneys would have had for taking the risk of litigating this case for a contingent fee. The trial court and Court of Appeals, however, have already awarded Strawn’s attorneys over $3 million in attorney fees. Thus, relative to the amount they would have received under the contingent fee agreement, Strawn’s attorneys are not being undercompensated by the base lodestar fee. The third error in Strawn’s calculation is his use of a 50-percent contingent fee that he and his attorneys negotiated as the appropriate comparison for a percent-offund analysis. As Strawn concedes, a court is not bound by that agreement in determining a reasonable fee to be paid from the class recovery under the common-fund doctrine.19 Strawn nevertheless presumes that a 50-percent fee would be appropriate in this case. We disagree. For individual litigation, the normal range for a reasonable contingent fee is between 33 and 40 percent of any recovery, with 50 percent usually serving as the upward limit. Conte, 1 Attorney Fee Awards § 2:8 at 123 (describing usual range) and § 2:8 at 106 (stating general upward limit). Class actions, however, generally benefit from significant economies of scale and generate proportionately larger common funds than do individually litigated cases. Id. § 1:9 at 27 and 2:7 at 104.20 Because of that reality, courts frequently reduce the percentage of the fund awarded below what would be awarded in individual litigation. Id. § 2:7 at 104. Thus, for complex class actions that result in substantial economic recoveries, the normal fees tend to be between 20 to 30 percent of the recovered fund, with deviations from 19 Specifically, Strawn acknowledges: “[G]iven a court’s unique authority in class-action proceedings and the necessity of ensuring that no conflict or adversity arises between the class and class counsel, the proper procedure in Oregon should ensure that attorney fee awards in class-action proceedings are always subject to the control of the court in which the class-action proceeding is pending, regardless of any written fee agreement.” (Emphasis in original.) 20 Said another way, from a contingent-fee practice market-based perspective, “class action lawyers working to generate common funds are in big business, while individual contingent-fee practitioners are in small business, generally speaking.” Conte, 1 Attorney Fee Awards § 1:9 at 26. 230 Strawn v. Farmers Ins. Co. that range when the fund is extraordinarily large or small relative to the hours of work reasonably expended by the attorneys. Id. § 2:8 at 106-14; see also Conte & Newberg, 4 Newberg on Class Actions § 14:6 at 550 (20 to 33 percent is usual range for securities and antitrust litigation). A 50 percent-of-fund fee remains the usual upward limit, so that the fee does not consume a disproportionate portion of the fund recovered. Conte, 1 Attorney Fee Awards § 2:8 at 106; Conte & Newberg, 4 Newberg on Class Actions § 14:6 at 550. But such a percentage is extraordinary. The median of the usual range—25 percent—is used by many courts as a reasonable starting point for common-fund awards in class actions, with deviations made based on circumstances justifying an upward or downward adjustment. Conte, 1 Attorney Fee Awards § 2:8 at 113. Here, the contingent fee agreement that Strawn and his attorneys entered into was at the upward limit: 50 percent of any fund awarded. For present purposes, we will assume (but need not decide) that that percentage might have been appropriate if this case had been litigated for Strawn in his individual capacity only. In this class action, however, Strawn’s attorneys benefitted from significant economies of scale. They were able to rely on evidence that was common to all the class members, rather than having to produce individualized proofs of the terms of their contracts, the acts that breached those contracts, and the reliance by the class members that was necessary to prove the fraud claim. Strawn, 350 Or at 340-44 (describing legal and factual basis for claims); id. at 351-62 (holding that reliance for fraud claim did not have to be established through individual proofs, but could be inferred from evidence common to class). And the class action aspect of the case undoubtedly aided Strawn in obtaining the $8 million punitive damages award, which depended on proof of reprehensibility through, among other class-based evidence, a showing of repeated, rather than isolated, wrongdoing. See generally Goddard v. Farmers Ins. Co., 344 Or 232, 253, 179 P3d 645 (2008) (discussing reprehensibility factor that supports award of punitive damages). Thus, because this was a class action case, Strawn’s attorneys likely generated a much larger common-fund award for significantly less effort than would Cite as 353 Or 210 (2013) 231 have been entailed in bringing individual claims for each class member.21 The remaining question is: What should an appropriate percent-of-fund fee be in this class action? The parties have not considered that question, and we conclude that we need not identify a particular percentage at this juncture. The total amount of attorney fees that Strawn’s attorneys received at trial and in the Court of Appeals already amounts to 42 percent of the common recovery awarded to the class, and therefore already exceeds the normal range for class actions awards. This is not a case that has resulted in an exceptionally small common-fund award, which might justify going above that normal range. Thus, the comparison demonstrates that no enhancement of the lodestar calculation is warranted. On Strawn’s main petition for attorney fees, then, we reject Strawn’s request for a multiplier or other enhancement of the base award of $202,719.
Common-Fund Awards What we have discussed so far is independent of how the fees should be allocated between the fee-shifting and common-fund awards. On that issue, Strawn asserts that about 40 percent of the fees sought in the main petition qualify for the fee-shifting award against Farmers, while 60 percent of those fees qualify for the award from the common fund. Farmers does not dispute Strawn’s allocation, with the exception of the percentage allocation that Strawn seeks for the post-opinion proceedings and the attorney fee petition. We accept Strawn’s proposed allocation, to the extent that Farmers does not dispute it.22 Of the $171,600 21 Indeed, such efficiencies are a prerequisite to maintaining a class action. See ORCP 32 B (trial court must find that “a class action is superior to other available methods for the fair and efficient adjudication of the controversy”). 22 Strawn has allocated all common work performed on the fee-shifting (contract) and common-fund (fraud) claims to the fee-shifting award only. That approach seems problematic. This is not a case that involves both a fee-generating and non-fee-generating claim. See, e.g., Estate of Wesley E. Smith v. Ware, 307 Or 478, 481, 769 P2d 773 (1989) (statutory fees can be awarded for work on both feegenerating and non-fee-generating claims, where work done on claim for which fee is authorized would have been incurred regardless of the non-fee-generating 232 Strawn v. Farmers Ins. Co. in attorney fees whose apportionment Farmers does not dispute, we therefore conclude that $59,268 should be apportioned to the fee-shifting award and $112,332 to the common-fund award. We turn to the disputed allocation for the post-opinion proceedings and the attorney fee petition. In that regard, Strawn asks this court to attribute to the fee-shifting award 99 percent of the time spent preparing the fee petition and responding to two post-opinion motions filed by Farmers: a petition to reconsider the opinion, and a motion to recuse one justice and, because of the recusal, to rehear the case. This court denied both motions by written opinion. Strawn, 350 Or at 521. Farmers’s expert asserts that only 10 percent of the time spent responding to the petition to reconsider and the motion to recuse should be attributed to the fee-shifting award, while the time spent preparing the attorney fee petition should be divided equally between the fee-shifting award and the common-fund award. We agree that Strawn’s allocation of 99 percent of that time to the fee-shifting award is not appropriate. Significant portions of the work necessarily benefitted the common-fund claims only. On reconsideration, for example, the only issue presented related to this court’s holding as to the fraud claim (i.e., the petition for reconsideration asserted that this court had improperly eliminated the reliance requirement of fraud by permitting classwide reliance to be inferred from evidence common to the class rather than established by individualized proof).23 As we have claim). Rather, here, both the contract and fraud claims are fee-generating claims, with the fees payable from different sources. To the extent that work on the claims was common to both, so that either claim would have required that same work regardless of the existence of the other, the more logical approach would be for the two sources for the awards to bear the fees for the common work equally. See Honeywell, 310 Or at 213 (to further purpose of each award, reasonable attorney fee award should be paid from both authorized sources where case involves both statutory fee award and common-fund award from punitive damages recovery). Farmers has not objected to Strawn’s allocation on that basis, however. Consequently, we accept Strawn’s proposed allocation without agreeing that his method of allocating all work common to both claims to the fee-shifting award is the appropriate one. 23 Farmers’s petition did also seek reconsideration based on the same facts that underlay Farmers’s motion to recuse. Recusal and rehearing would have affected the two contractual claims that were subject to a fee-shifting award under ORS 742.061(1), as well as the fraud claim. Strawn’s response to the petition for reconsideration, however, merely incorporated by reference his response to the Cite as 353 Or 210 (2013) 233 noted and as Strawn has conceded, the fee-shifting award authorized by ORS 742.061(1) does not apply to the fraud claim. Consequently, reasonable fees for time that Strawn’s attorneys spent responding to the petition to reconsider should be borne by the class, not shifted to Farmers. Similarly, although Strawn’s petition for attorney fees included time subject to a fee-shifting award, the petition addressed two matters that are not subject to a fee-shifting award: the requests for a common-fund award and for class administration fees. By definition, Strawn’s entitlement to a common-fund award was independent of the fee-shifting award. And although the class administration fees may be recoverable from the trial court under ORS 742.061(1), those fees had nothing to do with the issues on appeal or review, and the Court of Appeals had already ruled that they were not properly sought on appeal, Strawn, 233 Or App at 410 (a ruling that Strawn did not challenge before this court). For those reasons, we are satisfied that Strawn’s proposed allocation—one percent to the common-fund award and 99 percent to the fee-shifting award—is not justified. The problem, however, is that the time records presented by Strawn provide insufficient information to determine the correct allocation. Strawn, as the party seeking the award, has the obligation to provide sufficient information to justify the fee award. Farmers has agreed, however, that 10 percent of the amount spent responding to the petition to reconsider and motion to recuse ($1,131.90 of $11,319) and 50 percent of the amount spent responding to the attorney fee petition ($9,900 of $19,800) are properly apportioned to the fee-shifting claims. In light of Farmers’s position, we will apportion the hours attributable to the post-opinion proceedings and the attorney fee petition to the fee-shifting award accordingly. We conclude that the remainder is properly payable from the common fund. Accordingly, we apportion the $202,719 in attorney fees that we have approved in connection with the original fee petition as follows. Strawn is awarded $70,299.90 (the $59,268 undisputed portion of the fee award plus motion to recuse. Thus, the hours attributable to the motion to recuse fully account for the time Strawn’s attorneys spent working on that issue. 234 Strawn v. Farmers Ins. Co. $11,031.90 of the fees incurred in connection with the postopinion proceedings and attorney fee petition) as a feeshifting award payable by Farmers under ORS 742.061(1), which equals approximately 35 percent of the reasonable fees incurred. The remaining amount, $132,419.10, which is approximately 65 percent of the total, is awarded under the common-fund doctrine, to be paid from the punitive damages recovery in this case. D. Supplemental Fee Petitions Strawn has filed two supplemental petitions for attorney fees. The first supplemental fee petition seeks additional fees incurred to address post-opinion proceedings in this court as well as to prepare for an anticipated petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court by Farmers. The second supplemental fee petition seeks fees incurred in contesting Farmers’s certiorari petition before the United States Supreme Court. Farmers objects to both supplemental petitions. We begin with Strawn’s first supplemental petition for attorney fees. Strawn asks for $22,945 in fees, part of which is attributable to addressing Farmers’s objections to the original attorney fee petition, and part of which is attributable to responding to an anticipated petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States. Farmers objects to the time sought by the first supplemental petition that related to Farmers’s expected petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court— specifically, time that Strawn’s attorneys spent discussing the petition for certiorari, responding to Farmers’s motion for stay pending certiorari, and negotiating with Farmers about the supersedeas bond. Farmers asserts that those fees were premature, because Strawn’s request in the first supplemental fee petition preceded the filing of the certiorari petition. That is no longer true; Farmers since has petitioned the United States Supreme Court for certiorari, and the Court has since denied that petition. Accordingly, we overrule Farmers’s only objection (that the request is premature) and allow those fees. Neither party addresses to what extent the attorney fees claimed in the first supplemental fee petition Cite as 353 Or 210 (2013) 235 should be apportioned between the fee-shifting award and the common-fund award. As Strawn concedes in his second supplemental petition, however, the work done in responding to Farmers’ certiorari petition is fairly attributable only to the fraud claim, which presented a potential federal question and was the exclusive focus of that petition. Likewise, the work done in anticipating the certiorari petition was also fairly attributable only to the fraud claim. Strawn has provided no documentation that would permit this court to determine what portion of the remaining fees sought in the first supplemental fee petition should be awarded against Farmers and what portion should be awarded from the common fund. We therefore decline to make such an allocation between the two awards. We conclude, however, that the fees requested by the first supplemental fee petition are reasonable in amount, and that they were reasonably incurred by Strawn’s attorneys in defending the damages awards that accrued to the benefit of the class as a whole. Those amounts are therefore appropriate to award from the common fund. Accordingly, we award Strawn $22,945 in attorney fees on the first supplemental fee petition, to be paid from the punitive damages as a common-fund award. We turn, then, to the second supplemental fee petition. In that petition, Strawn seeks fees that his counsel incurred in defending against Farmers’s petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court. Strawn seeks a base award of $135,648 as compensation for 274.5 hours of legal work. As with the original fee petition, Strawn asks this court to impose a multiplier to those fees to compensate for the contingent nature of the award. Strawn concedes that none of those fees is attributable to the fee-shifting award; he seeks them only as a common-fund award. Farmers objects on a several grounds.24 24 Strawn argues that we should not consider Farmers’s objections, asserting that they are untimely because they were filed more than 14 days after Strawn filed the second supplemental fee petition. See ORAP 13.10(6) (allowing 14 days to object to attorney fee petition). Strawn’s position is not well-taken. Strawn’s second supplemental fee petition was deficient because it lacked the proof of service required by our rules. See ORAP 1.35(2)(d) (“Anything filed with the Administrator shall contain    proof of service in the form of a statement of the date and manner of service   .”). This court issued a notice of deficiency requiring Strawn to submit a certificate of service within 14 days or “the defective document will not be considered by the 236 Strawn v. Farmers Ins. Co. Farmers first objects that this court lacks authority to award fees incurred before the United States Supreme Court. Relatedly, Farmers objects that there is no authority to award attorney fees to Robert Peck, Strawn’s counsel of record in the Supreme Court, because that attorney is not admitted to practice in Oregon. If Strawn were seeking to recover for that work through the fee-shifting award authorized by ORS 742.061(1), Farmers’s arguments might be well taken because the statute authorizes a fee award only on an action brought “in any court in this state.” In this instance, however, Strawn seeks those fees only from the punitive damages award under the common-fund doctrine. As we have already explained, the common-fund doctrine is an exercise of equity to prevent unjust enrichment. The right to recover for unjust enrichment does not depend on the unjust enrichment having occurred in court proceedings. See Dan B. Dobbs, 1 Dobbs Law of Remedies § 4.1(2), 557-63 (2d ed 1993) (listing broad categories of cases where plaintiff may be entitled to restitution from defendant for unjust enrichment, including when defendant breached contract, when defendant obtained title to property by wrongdoing, or when plaintiff conferred benefit on defendant by contract based on mistake or unforeseen change in conditions). The question, then, is not whether fees resulted from attorney representation in this court, or in any court at all. The question is whether the other class members would be unjustly enriched by receiving the benefits of that representation without having to pay for it. We have already concluded that they would. Accordingly, we have authority to award the requested fees from the common fund. Farmers additionally asserts that Strawn’s attorneys incurred an unreasonable number of hours in opposing the petition for certiorari. Among other responses, Strawn asserts that Farmers’s petition contained numerous factual misrepresentations. For that reason, he was obligated court.” See ORAP 1.20(2) (authorizing court to strike any document that does not conform to any statute or rule). Because this court had given notice that the fee petition might effectively be stricken, the time for Farmers to respond to the fee petition was tolled. Farmers filed its objections within 14 days of the deficiency being cured. Cite as 353 Or 210 (2013) 237 to file a brief to correct those perceived misstatements, or risk waiving any objection to them. See S Ct Rule 15.2 (party potentially waives objection if brief in opposition does not address any perceived misstatements made in the petition for certiorari, including factual misstatements). Farmers did not submit any expert affidavit that would otherwise bring into question the reasonableness of the number of hours expended by Strawn’s counsel to respond to the petition for certiorari. For those reasons, we reject Farmers’s argument that the number of hours were unreasonable. Finally, Farmers objects to Strawn’s request for a multiplier on the attorney fees claimed in the second supplemental petition. We agree with Farmers that a multiplier is not appropriate for the same reasons that we concluded that a multiplier or other enhancement to the lodestar was not appropriate in connection with the original fee petition. We need not repeat that analysis at any length. As we have explained, the amount of fees that Strawn’s attorneys have received to date (42 percent of the total class recovery) already compares favorably—and, indeed, potentially exceeds—a properly calculated reasonable percent-of-fund fee. With the attorney fees that we are awarding for work done on review to this court, Strawn’s attorneys will receive an amount that equates with an even greater percentage of the total recovery (approximately 46 percent).25 An enhancement to the lodestar fee that we have already determined is reasonable therefore is not warranted. 25 To be clear, the amount of attorneys fees awarded through all stages of this case (trial, appeal, and now review) is slightly over $4 million, which is about 46 percent of the total common fund, but most of that amount is not being paid from the common fund. When the final math is done, the total amount of fees shifted to Farmers, given the multipliers applied by the trial court and Court of Appeals, exceeds $3.2 million, which is about 80 percent of the total attorney fees awarded. The class, on the other hand, will bear a total of $837,148.10 (including the fees awarded in this court), or about 20 percent of the total attorney fees awarded for the litigation. As those numbers reveal, from a percent-of-fund perspective, Farmers has significantly subsidized the fees that would otherwise be due from the punitive damages recovery. That is true even though Farmers is responsible for shifted fees only on the contractual claims and the compensatory damages recovery (about $900,000) and is not responsible for the work done on the fraud claim and punitive damages award ($8 million). Whether those respective amounts, viewed from a percent-of-fund perspective, represent a fair apportionment of the fees is not before us, because it is a consequence of the amounts awarded by the trial court and the Court of Appeals, which have not been drawn into question on review. 238 Strawn v. Farmers Ins. Co. On the second supplemental fee petition, then, we award Strawn $135,648 in attorney fees, payable from the punitive damages award under the common-fund doctrine.