The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has upheld a lower court’s ruling in determining how much to award the attorneys who represented a plaintiff in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case, agreeing that the amount originally sought by the attorneys was excessive and saying their argument in their appeal was absurd.
A copy of the ruling in the case of Beckler v. Rent Recovery Solutions can be accessed by clicking here.
The plaintiff was contacted by the defendant about a debt. The plaintiff said she disputed the debt and asked the defendant to send written documentation to validate it. A month later, the defendant started furnishing information about the debt to a credit reporting agency without sharing that the debt was being disputed. The plaintiff filed suit, alleging the defendant violated the FDCPA by failing to provide the requested documents and failing to note that the account was disputed. The defendant answered the complaint and made an offer of judgment of $2,000 plus reasonable attorneys’ fees, which was accepted. The plaintiff’s attorneys submitted a motion seeking $18,810 in fees and costs. The District Court judge, had no problem with the hourly rates sought by the attorneys and the paralegal, but determined the hours they expended on the case were excessive and reduced the amount by 50%, to $9,480. The plaintiffs appealed that ruling to the Eighth Circuit.
The plaintiff’s attorneys argued that the District Court judge departed from the lodestar calculation by imposing a cap that violates FDCPA policies and “deprives counsel of full compensation for bringing consumer enforcement actions under this complex federal statute.” The Eighth Circuit disagreed.
The District Court judge found that, on average, in similar FDCPA lawsuits, the amount of hours worked by plaintiff’s attorneys was 22 hours. In this case, the plaintiff’s attorneys claimed to have conducted more than 50 hours of work.
“Despite Beckler’s attempt to paint her FDCPA claims as complex and cutting edge, we agree with the district court that her case was factually and legally straightforward, as her acceptance of a quick offer of judgment confirms,” the panel wrote. “The district court did not abuse its substantial discretion in finding that fifty hours was unreasonable for such a claim.”
