The opinion
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
WESTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
___________________________________________
TAYLOR RAE HINE, on her own behalf and on
behalf of others similarly situated,
DECISION AND ORDER
Plaintiff,
22-CV-6075L
v.
INSOMNIA COOKIES, et al.,
Defendants.
___________________________________________
On October 4, 2022, the Court issued a Decision and Order in this case (Dkt. #31)
granting defendants’ motion to vacate the judgment entered on July 11, 2022. Pursuant to that
Decision and Order, the Court entered an amended judgment (Dkt. #32). The Court also gave
plaintiff the opportunity to file a supplement to her motion for attorney’s fees and costs (Dkt.
#21). Plaintiff has done so, and defendants have filed their response.
BACKGROUND
The relevant facts are set forth in the Court’s October 4 decision, familiarity with which
is assumed, and will not be repeated at length here. This action was brought for damages and
other relief stemming from defendants’ alleged violations of federal and state labor laws relating
to employee work hours and pay.
After defendants filed dispositive motions, plaintiff’s counsel informed the Court that
plaintiff had accepted defendants’ offer of judgment. Plaintiff also submitted a proposed
judgment, which was filed by the Clerk of the Court. Plaintiff also moved for attorney’s fees,
pursuant to the terms of the judgment.
Defendants then filed a motion to vacate the judgment, on the ground that the judgment
submitted by plaintiff and filed by the Clerk was materially different from the offer of judgment
tendered by defendants to plaintiff. The Court granted that motion, and entered an amended
judgment conforming to the terms of defendants’ offer of judgment.
Consistent with the offer of judgment, the amended judgment provided that “defendants
shall separately pay reasonable attorney’s fees and costs, the amount of which shall be
determined by the Court unless the parties otherwise agree on a fee award, to be submitted to the
Court for its review and approval.” (Dkt. #32 at 1). The parties have not agreed on a fee award,
and plaintiff now seeks an award of $21,167 in attorney’s fees and $536.80 in costs, for a total of
$21,703.80. Defendants do not dispute that plaintiff is entitled to some award, but contend that
the amount should be far less than what is requested.1
Plaintiff seeks an award for 42.19 hours of work on this case, at hourly rates ranging from
$200 for an associate and a managing clerk to $650 for John Troy, Esq., the principal of Troy
Law, PLLC and the managing attorney on this case.
Having reviewed the time records submitted by plaintiff’s counsel, and the supporting
declaration of John Troy, I agree with defendants that the fee request is excessive, both as to the
time expended and the rates claimed. It must be substantially reduced.
1 In their initial response to the motion for attorney’s fees, defendants state that the award should be reduced
to $4000. (Dkt. #26 at 18.) In their more recent response to plaintiff’s supplemental filing, defendants state only
that the Court should “apply a substantial across-the-board reduction ...” to the amount sought. (Dkt. #34 at 10.)
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While 42 hours is not per se an excessive amount of time for a case of this nature, it
should be remembered that this case was of short duration. The complaint was filed on February
11, 2022, and plaintiff’s notice of acceptance of defendants’ offer of judgment was filed less than
five months later, on July 1, 2022. The case never reached the certification stage, and though
defendants did file motions to dismiss and for partial summary judgment, plaintiff never filed a
response, and the notice of acceptance was filed just over two weeks later.2 That the case
dragged on for another five months before the Court entered an amended judgment was primarily
due to plaintiff’s having filed a proposed judgment that did not accurately reflect the terms of
defendants’ offer, and to the apparent refusal of plaintiff’s counsel to agree to correct the
problem, which led to further litigation.
In addition, “[i]n assessing whether an attorney’s time was reasonably expended, the
Court must ask whether the attorney exercised billing judgment.” Costa v. Sears Home
Improvement Products, Inc., 212 F.Supp.3d 412, 425 (W.D.N.Y. 2016) (quoting Anderson v.
Rochester-Genesee Reg’l Transp. Auth., 388 F.Supp.2d 159, 163 (W.D.N.Y. 2005)). Here,
counsel’s billing records show that Troy, the highest-paid attorney at an hourly rate of $650,
billed just under 26 hours–about 61.5% of the total hours claimed–on the case. Aaron
Schweitzer, who is listed as the managing associate with a rate of $400 per hour, worked 13.86
hours, or about one-third of the total. The lowest-paid attorney, Tiffany Troy, whose rate is
$200, worked about 20 minutes on the case.3
2 There is no indication from counsel’s billing records that any time was spent preparing a response to
defendants’ motions.
3 Another individual, Preethi Kilaru, is stated to have worked one and one-third hours, also at $200 per
hour. Kilaru is stated to have received an LLM from SMU Dedman School of Law in 2018, and to have graduated
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Plaintiff’s counsel states that Troy Law is a small firm, which makes it more difficult to
delegate work to junior attorneys, compared to a large firm with many associates. Even allowing
for that, the Court does not consider it consistent with good billing judgment for the highest-paid
attorney in the firm (in fact, the firm’s principal) to have done over 60 percent of the work on this
case (which never involved more than a single plaintiff and never got to any advanced stage of
litigation), while a more junior but still highly paid lawyer worked one-third of the total hours,
while the lowest-paid associate worked a negligible amount of the total.
I also agree with defendants that plaintiff is not entitled to any award of fees for time
spent in connection with plaintiff’s filing of the proposed judgment and the ensuing litigation
following plaintiff’s acceptance of defendants’ offer of judgment. As this Court noted in its prior
decision in this case, “[n]ot only should plaintiff not have filed a proposed judgment” at all, “but
the judgment that was drafted and submitted by plaintiff’s counsel differed in some material
respects from defendants’ offer of judgment.” 2022 WL 4922184, at *2. The litigation that
followed was both unnecessary and completely avoidable. Counsel should not be compensated
for work that was occasioned by counsel’s own missteps.4
As stated, I also find the claimed hourly rates excessive. “The reasonable hourly rate is,
generally, the hourly rate employed by attorneys in the district in which the litigation is brought.”
from a law school in India prior to that, but is described in plaintiff’s submission as “managing clerk.” (Dkt. #20 at
26.)
4 Even if the Court were inclined to award fees for some of that time, the hours claimed are excessive. The
billing records show that John Troy spent 1.25 hours “draft[ing] notice of acceptance of offer of judgment and
proposed judgment,” and another two hours “revis[ing], and finaliz[ing the] proposed judgment.” (Dkt. #20-1 at 2.)
Not only was it unnecessary to draft any judgment, as explained above, the time it took to do so was excessive; when
the Court decided that it was necessary to vacate the prior judgment and enter an amended judgment, it took under an
hour to draft the amended judgment.
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Snead v. Interim HealthCare of Rochester, Inc., 286 F.Supp.3d 546, 557 (W.D.N.Y. 2018)
(internal quote omitted). The rates here are well above typical hourly rates in the Western
District for attorneys of comparable experience, in this type of litigation. See, e.g., Cardenas v.
A.J. Piedimonte Agr. Dev., LLC, No. 18-cv-881, 2020 WL 3469681, at *5 (W.D.N.Y. June 25,
2020) (approving hourly rates ranging from $85-$100 per hour for paralegals, to $200 per hour
for an attorney with seven years of experience, to $300 per hour for the an attorney with more
than 15 years of relevant legal experience); Taylor v. Delta-Sonic Car Wash Systems, Inc., No.
14-CV-6698, 2017 WL 436045, at *7 (W.D.N.Y. Jan. 31, 2017) (finding hourly rates of
$225-$250 for partner time and $75 for paralegal time to be appropriate in FLSA case).
It also bears mentioning that this law firm, Troy Law, appears to have a history of
submitting unreasonably high fee requests, both as to rates and hours. As one district court
recently put it, “[a] treatise worth of case law has emerged about the rates and hours that Troy
Law has requested. And courts have balked at the sort of rates requested in this case.” Garcia v.
Francis Gen. Constr. Inc., No. 20-CV-4323, 2022 WL 2698434, at *7 (S.D.N.Y. July 12, 2022)
(citing cases). Stating that “[t]he Court agrees with the many other courts in this District to have
reduced Troy Law’s requested rates,” the court in Garcia reduced John Troy’s rate from the $600
requested to $300, Schweitzer’s from $400 to $150, and the rates of other associates and
employees in a similar fashion. (Notably, Garcia is from the Southern District, where prevailing
rates are generally higher than those here in the Western District.) The court further reduced the
hours claimed by one-third across the board, finding that the billed hours were excessive. The
reduction of both the rates and the hours also reflected the fact that Troy Law repeatedly
submitted papers that were “error-ridden.” Id. at *8. See also Chen v. Marvel Food Services
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LLC, No. 15-CV-6206, 2022 WL 4226098, at *5 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 9, 2022) (reducing Troy Law’s
hours by 30% to account for “poor billing practices” and “myriad deficiencies”).
With all these considerations in mind, the Court will award fees at the following hourly
rates: $300 for John Troy; $200 for Aaron Schweitzer; $150 for Tiffany Troy; and $100 for
Preethi Kilaru.5 The Court will further subtract nine hours from the hours claimed, to reflect
time spent in connection with counsel’s filing of a proposed judgment and to respond to
defendants’ motion to vacate the judgment. The Court will further reduce the hours claimed by
30% across the board, to account for poor billing judgment and unnecessary, excessive or
duplicative work. See E.E.O.C. v. Green Lantern Inn, Inc., No. 19-CV-6704, 2022 WL 1467820,
at *8 (W.D.N.Y. May 10, 2022) (“Courts need not ‘conduct a “line-by-line analysis” of an
attorney’s fee application because it is not realistic or practical to expect a trial judge to evaluate
and rule on every entry’”) (quoting Figueroa v. KK Sup II, LLC, No. 15-CV-6526, 2019 WL
1109864, at *11 (W.D.N.Y. Mar. 11, 2019)) (additional internal quote omitted). That results in a
total fee award of $6092.80.6
5 Plaintiff’s supplement to the fee motion also includes an entry of 0.4 hour at a rate of $350 for Oscar
Alvarado, dated August 16, 2022, described as “review of file w/ GD.” (Dkt. #33-1 at 3.) There is no indication of
what that vague entry means, what it relates to, who Alvarado is, or why he should be compensated at that rate. The
Court disallows that entry in its entirety.
6 Defendants do not appear to object to the claimed costs of $536.80, and plaintiff will be awarded that
amount in full.
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CONCLUSION
Plaintiff's motion for attorney's fees (Dkt. #19) is granted, and plaintiff is hereby awarded
the sum of $6092.80 in attorney’s fees, and $536.80 in costs. Judgment should be entered
accordingly. That amount shall be paid by defendants within thirty (30) days of the date of entry
of this Decision and Order.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
DAVID G. LARIMER
United States District Judge
Dated: Rochester, New York
November 28, 2022.
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