On Tuesday, Judge Kaplan awarded approximately $500,000 attorneys’ fees, under a contractual fee-shifting provision, to a defendant that won a motion to dismiss and defended the win on appeal. The plaintiff had sought to rescind certain transactions as inconsistent with the securities laws, but the defendant successfully moved to dismiss the complaint back in February 2024. The Court declined to rule on defendant’s motion for contractually-mandated attorneys’ fees until the appeal was finalized. After the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal in August, the defendant renewed its motion, based on agreements between the parties that provided for “reasonable attorney’s fees and costs” in any litigation.
The Court mostly rejected the plaintiff’s arguments regarding hourly rates, excessive hours, case overstaffing and vague Westlaw billing. However, the Court agreed with the plaintiff with respect to the preparation of the appeal, finding that over 100 hours of argument prep was too high and hence reducing the requested amount by 20%:
As noted, the fee application for the appeal seeks compensation for approximately 321 hours. By the Court’s rough calculation, over 100 hours of that time was spent in one form or another in preparation for the oral argument. No doubt there are appeals for which such lavish preparation is well warranted. With defendant’s able counsel, however, the Court is not persuaded that this was one of them. Accordingly, the Court will reduce the requested fee for the appeal by 20 percent – i.e., award a fee of $342,897 for the appeal.