E.D. New York cuts wage and hour fee award 63.6%, including for clerical work

What happened

Troy Law LLC sought $110,239.50 in fees under the Fair Labor Standards Act for 261.62 hours. The court reduced the requested hourly rates for John Troy, Aaron Schweitzer, George Byun, another timekeeper, and Ms. Kilaru, Mr. Lou and Mr. Das. It declined fees for 6.25 hours of travel and clerical work it could not evaluate, then applied a 40% across-the-board reduction to billed hours for clerical work, redundancies, inefficiencies and full-rate travel charges. The court awarded $40,150.50, a reduction of $70,089.00.

What the court said

Because the Court cannot effectively evaluate these requests, the Court declines to award fees to Mr. Troy and Mr. Schweitzer at those rates and hours.

this Court finds that a 40% across-the-board reduction in hours billed is appropriate for this case

The court also reduced the award for: hourly rate reduced, hourly rate reduced, hourly rate reduced, hourly rate reduced, hourly rate reduced, travel time, excessive hours, travel time.

Why it matters

The ruling shows that a fee petition can lose value at two stages: the court sets reasonable hourly rates, then scrutinizes the hours themselves. Time entries that mix clerical tasks with legal work, repeat meetings or charge full rates for travel give the court little basis to evaluate the request and can support a broad percentage cut rather than an item-by-item review.

How to keep this out of your fee petition

• Leave purely clerical work off the fee petition.
• Describe paralegal tasks so the substantive work is clear.
• Split mixed entries into their substantive and clerical parts.

Cite this ruling

See hourly rates the E.D. New York approves and attorney fee motions in New York federal courts.

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