You just lost a case in which the opposing party has a claim for attorney fees pursuant to a contract, statute or other fee-shifting mechanism. The opposing party has now filed a motion for attorney fees. Your initial reaction is to oppose the motion by arguing that the amount of time spent by the opposing party’s attorneys was excessive and their hourly rates are unreasonable. Before pulling the trigger, however, you will want to consider a potential negative ramification of taking that position.
When a party requests an award of attorney fees, the party must establish that its request is reasonable, meaning that the time spent on the case by its attorneys was reasonable in the context of the factual and legal issues in dispute, and that its attorneys’ hourly rates are reasonable in the community in which the case is venued. The party on the other end of the motion, of course, has the right to challenge the fee request. When such a challenge is made, the moving party may counter by seeking discovery of the objecting party’s attorney fees in the case. This is usually done for two reasons: (1) to try to back off the objecting party by creating the risk that its own attorney fees will be discoverable, and (2) to argue to the court that the best evidence of what is reasonable is what the objecting party paid in litigating the same legal and factual issues in the case.
Wisconsin has not yet decided whether such discovery is permissible, but courts in other jurisdictions have frequently considered the issue and are split on their holdings. The majority of courts hold that discovery of an objecting party’s attorney fees is permissible under these circumstances. As one court held, “the defendant’s fees may provide the best available comparable standard to measure the reasonableness of plaintiffs’ expenditures in litigating the issues of the case.” Chicago Prof’l Sports Ltd. P’ship v. Nat’l Basketball Ass’n, 1996 WL 66111, at *3 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 13, 1996). As another court held, “the time spent by the defense counsel . . . may well be the best measure of what amount of time is reasonable,” calling it a “logical yardstick.” Pollard v. E.I. DuPont De Nemours and Co., 2004 WL 784489, at *3 (W.D. Tenn. Feb. 24, 2004).
Numerous other cases hold the same way. See, e.g., Henson v. Columbus Bank and Tr. Co., 770 F.2d 1566, 1574-75 (11th Cir. 1985); In re Fine Paper Antitrust Litig., 751 F.2d 562, 587 (3d Cir. 1984); Frommert v. Conkright, 2016 WL 6093998, at **2-3 (W.D.N.Y. Oct. 19, 2016); Mendez v. Radec Corp., 818 F. Supp. 2d 667, 668-69 (W.D.N.Y. 2011); Cohen v. Brown Univ., 1999 WL 695235, at **2-4 (D.R.I. May 19, 1999); Murray v. Stuckey’s Inc., 153 F.R.D. 151, 153 (N.D. Iowa 1993); Coal. to Save our Children v. State Bd. of Educ., 143 F.R.D. 61, 64‑66 (D. Del. 1992); Real v. Cont’l Grp., Inc., 116 F.R.D. 211, 213-14 (N.D. Cal. 1986); Blowers v. Lawyers Coop. Publ’g Co., 526 F. Supp. 1324, 1325-28 (W.D.N.Y. 1981); Naismith v. Prof’l Golfers Ass’n, 85 F.R.D. 552, 562-64 (N.D. Ga. 1979); Stastny v. S. Bell Tel. and Tel. Co., 77 F.R.D. 662, 663-64 (W.D.N.C. 1978); Vulcan Materials Co. v. Chandler, 992 So. 2d 1252, 1268 (Ala. 2008); Paton v. Geico Gen. Ins. Co., 190 So. 3d 1047, 1050-53 (Fla. 2016); Miller v. Kenny, 325 P.3d 278, 303 (Wash. Ct. App. 2014).
A minority of courts go the other way, holding that what an objecting party paid in attorney fees to defend a case is not relevant on the issue of whether what the plaintiff paid to prosecute the case is reasonable. The most recent case to so hold is In re Nat’l Lloyds Ins. Co., 532 S.W.3d 794 (Tex. 2017). In that case, the Texas Supreme Court held as follows:
To the extent factual information about hourly rates and aggregate attorney fees is not privileged, that information is generally irrelevant and nondiscoverable because it does not establish or tend to establish the reasonableness or necessity of the attorney fees an opposing party has incurred. A party’s litigation expenditures reflect only the value that party has assigned to litigating the matter, which may be influenced by myriad party-specific interests. Absent a fee-shifting claim, a party’s attorney-fee expenditures need not be reasonable or necessary for the particular case. Barring unusual circumstances, allowing discovery of such information would spawn unnecessary case-within-a-case litigation devoted to determining the reasonableness and necessity of attorney-fee expenditures that are not at issue in the litigation.
Id. at 799. Other cases similarly holding include Hernandez v. George, 793 F.2d 264, 268 (10th Cir. 1986); Ohio-Sealy Mattress Mfg. Co. v. Sealy Inc., 776 F.2d 646, 659-60 (7th Cir. 1985); Costa v. Sears Home Improvement Prods., Inc., 178 F. Supp. 3d 108, 113 (W.D.N.Y. 2016).
Because Wisconsin has not decided this issue as of yet, and other jurisdictions are split on the issue, it may be risky to oppose an opponent’s request for attorney fees on the grounds that the time spent by its attorneys was excessive or its attorneys’ hourly rates are unreasonable, particularly if it is anticipated that the attorney fees you spent likely exceed the attorney fees spent by your opponent.
Dean Laing is the President of O’Neil Cannon, and a member of its Litigation Practice Group. He can be reached at 414-276-5000.
