Judge rejects another fee request, says LR law firm inflating costs
A federal judge has issued another scathing order denying a fee request from a Little Rock law firm that specializes in labor disputes, accusing the firm of unnecessarily driving up costs at the expense of the losing party.
In June, U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson rejected a request for $96,000 in attorneys’ fees from the Sanford Law Firm, which won a class-action dispute about overtime pay on behalf of 234 employees of Welspun Pipes. Wilson instead awarded the firm just $1 and noted that he only awarded that much because the statute says attorneys’ fees “shall” be paid to the winning party.
In cases filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law allows the prevailing party to seek attorneys’ fees from the losing party. Judges often grant a lesser amount of fees than the attorney for the prevailing party seeks, but rarely do judges grant as little as $1 or critique the way a law firm is managed.
Sanford, which is appealing the June order to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, has called it “flabbergasting.”
Since then, Wilson has issued at least two more orders denying the firm’s full request for fees, including one issued Monday in which Wilson again cited “unreasonable hours and unnecessary oversight by the managing lawyer,” referring to Josh Sanford.
A law school professor, however, said Wilson’s focus on the way Sanford manages his firm is “patently ridiculous.”
“The fact is, if you are the named partner in a case, you are on the hook if something goes wrong,” said Robert Steinbuch, a professor at the
University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Bowen School of Law. Steinbuch said there is nothing wrong with a firm’s managing partner reviewing the work of a junior attorney and billing for it.
“Bill Wilson has apparently got a bee in his bonnet for the Sanford Law Firm,” Steinbuch said after reviewing Monday’s order and the order in the Welspun case.
Steinbuch said Monday’s order made some points “within the realm of reasonableness” but that other assertions by the judge were “not reasonable.”
“Judge Wilson has a penchant for deciding that irrespective of the law, he is going to make his mark,” the law professor said.
In the latest order, Wilson granted the Sanford firm $2,952.50 in attorneys’ fees and $400 in costs from Nilkanth Pizza Inc., the defendant in a dispute over overtime pay that was settled separately from the fee issue for $5,000. The firm had sought $8,948.50 in fees and $400 in costs.
Wilson said he reviewed billing records “that include unreasonable hours and unnecessary oversight by the managing lawyer.”
He added, “Two months ago, I issued an opinion that I thought made quite clear that this practice should stop,” referring to the Welspun case, in which he said the Sanford firm “can disagree with whether over-staffing and micro-managing cases is a reasonable business practice, but defendants should not pay for the costly practice.”
This week’s order noted that a federal judge on the opposite side of the state — U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks of the Western District of Arkansas — said in an Aug. 14 ruling, “The Sanford Law Firm may choose to have Mr. Sanford personally oversee every aspect of run-ofthe-mill motion practice requiring no court appearance, but it will not be permitted to pass the associated costs of doing so on to Defendants.”
Wilson recalled that in the Welspun case, he cited rulings from seven judges who criticized the Sanford firm’s overstaffing of cases. He said he believes the judges have all been clear, “but, just in case, let me put it this way: Mr. Sanford will not be paid for unnecessarily micro-managing associate attorneys in non-complex FLSA cases.”
Wilson said he wouldn’t require the defendant to pay for any hours billed by Sanford himself. The judge also criticized hours billed for preparing what he considered “unnecessary” motions, and he said too much time was billed for drafting filings.
Sanford said Monday that other judges have denied his full requests for fees, but not while criticizing the way he runs his firm.
He added, “What he’s not saying is that there are literally hundreds of cases that we’ve resolved without an issue.”
In his most recent request for fees in a case in Wilson’s court, the veteran attorney cited rulings of other judges agreeing with his requests. But, noting Wilson’s earlier objection to him charging $350 an hour, Sanford requested an hourly fee of $275 in the most recent case. Wilson responded by saying Sanford wasn’t entitled to more than $250 an hour.
Steinbuch, who said he doesn’t know Sanford personally, said he believes the $350 rate is reasonable, noting, “Josh Sanford is a very capable attorney in the community, and $350 is a very reasonable rate for any attorney.”
He also said he doesn’t believe that Wilson’s characterization of the labor cases as “run-of-the-mill” is accurate.
“What is ironic,” Steinbuch said, “is that Bill Wilson thinks he can micromanage how Josh Sanford manages his own law firm.”
In a filing last year, attorneys representing Dassault Falcon Jet Corp. complained to now-retired U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes about Sanford’s request for fees after a dispute over overtime wages.
“This case did not require the resources that Plaintiffs claim to have expended on it,” wrote attorneys Brian Vandiver of North Little Rock and John B. Brown of Dallas. Getting more specific, they said: “This case did not call for the attention of 14 attorneys, in addition to law clerks and other staff. The 134 hours of internal conferences among these 14 attorneys, at a cost of over $30,000, were what one court in this circuit has called ‘vast overkill.’”
They asked Holmes to award $124,295.68 instead of the $165,984.75 that the Sanford firm sought.
Holmes agreed to slash $8,227.94 of the fees requested for internal conferences, calling the argument against those fees “well taken,” and other fees for preparing documents, for a total fee award of $148,223.81. The defendants didn’t object to the Sanford firm’s request to recover $3,561.27 in costs, which was also granted.