18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

224 Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition inefficient use of time, and time spent performing tasks that could have been performed by less experienced professionals. Id . at *13-14. The Court raised a concern that all the work performed in the case was performed by partners at partner rates, and therefore, all hours were spent by partners on document review, preparation of requests for admission, and motion practice, which the Court noted could have been done with senior counsel, associate attorneys, paralegals, and non-professional staff might. The Court determined that it could not approval a fee request seeking thousands of dollars for partners to perform mundane and elementary tasks like document review, discovery drafting, brief drafting, and legal research. Id . at *15. To account for the lack of billing judgment, the Court reduced the fee request by 35% from amount calculated using the new rates. The Court also found that the total number of hours billed was reasonable had the work been dispersed between multiple professional and calculated the lodestar as $1,298,006.13. The Court noted that although counsel secured a favorable settlement, given the relatively straightforward subject-matter of the litigation, it was not one justifying a modification to the lodestar. The Court thus concluded that a reasonable fee based on the record, the arguments, and the law was $1,298,006.13. Id . at *21. Plaintiffs also sought costs of $131,128.15, much of which came from the hosting the voluminous amount of ESI produced. The Court concluded that Plaintiffs’ requested cost for ESI hosting was reasonable and supported by the documentary evidence. The Court therefore awarded $131,128.15 in costs and expenses. Accordingly, the Court granted in part and denied in part the motion for attorneys’ fees and costs. Hoenninger, et al. v. Leasing Enterprises, Ltd., 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27166 (W.D. Tex. Feb. 12, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of restaurant servers, filed a collective action alleging that Defendant improperly deducted a 3.25% credit card processing fee from Plaintiffs’ tips in violation of the FLSA. Plaintiffs also alleged that Defendant’s FLSA violations were willful and not undertaken in good faith. The parties eventually proceeded to a bench trial, at which time the Court held that, while Defendant was liable to its employees for the improper tip deduction, its conduct constituted a good faith error and did not amount to a willful violation of the FLSA. The Court awarded Plaintiffs a judgment totaling $640,234.48. Id. at *2. Plaintiffs subsequently filed a motion for attorneys’ fees and costs. Specifically, Plaintiffs sought attorneys’ fees of $761,248.20 and costs of $48,680.43, while Defendant urged the Court to award only $72,850 in fees and $638 in costs. Defendant’s primary objection to Plaintiffs’ fee request was that Plaintiffs’ counsel allegedly spent two years working on the willfulness and good faith claims, which were unsuccessful. The Magistrate Judge noted that, though Plaintiffs generally cannot recover attorneys’ fees for unsuccessful claims, “‘a party may recover for time spent on unsuccessful motions so long as it succeeds in the overall claim.’” Id. at *16. Moreover, the Magistrate Judge found that Defendant’s argument was quickly disproven by the time entries of Plaintiffs’ counsel, as there were literally “hundreds of entries for tasks” that appeared to have nothing to do with the Plaintiffs’ decision to contest the issues of whether Defendant’s actions “were willful and taken in good faith.” Id. at *15. However, in acknowledgement of the two unsuccessful claims, the Magistrate Judge recommend reducing Plaintiffs’ fee request by 15%. Defendant also challenged the time entries of Plaintiffs’ counsel as excessive, duplicative, and vague, and while the Magistrate Judge rejected most of Defendant’s contentions, it agreed that Plaintiffs’ fee request should be reduced by approximately $23,000. This reduction, according to the Magistrate Judge, was due to time entries included from other matters and travel time that should have been billed at a 50% rate. As to the requested costs, Defendant argued that Plaintiffs failed to substantiate their alleged costs with a description of how and why those costs were undertaken. The Magistrate Judge agreed. On this issue, the Magistrate Judge found Plaintiffs’ cost records to be “cryptic” and lacking key details regarding how they related to the case. Id. at *34- 35. The Magistrate Judge also noted that Plaintiffs’ bore the burden of demonstrating why they were entitled to the requested costs, yet their fee application barely mentioned costs. The only fees to which Defendant did not object were Plaintiffs’ filing fees, which amounted to $638. Accordingly, the Magistrate Judge recommended that the Court grant in part and deny in part Plaintiffs’ motion for attorneys’ fees, thus awarding $623,785.25 in fees and $638 in costs. Kinkead, et al. v. Humana, Inc. , Case No. 15-CV-1637 (D. Conn. Aug. 26, 2021). Plaintiffs filed a collective and class action alleging that Defendant failed to pay minimum wage and overtime compensation in violation of the FLSA and state wage & hour laws. The parties ultimately settled the matter and the Court granted preliminary settlement approval. Following notice to class and collective action members, Plaintiffs filed a motion for final settlement approval and for an award of attorneys’ fees and costs. The Court granted the motion. The Court ruled that the settlement satisfied each of the final approval criteria, was in the best interests of the