A District Court judge in Minnesota has awarded the attorney representing a pair of plaintiffs in a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case $12,000 in fees, which was nearly 60% less than what the attorney was seeking.
The Background: The plaintiffs incurred a medical debt for one of their children and the facility retained a collection agency to recover the balance. When the defendants attempted to collect on the debt, they used an old address that the plaintiffs no longer lived at, and it was not the address the plaintiff provided to the facility when the debt was incurred.
- The defendants filed a collection lawsuit, using the old address, and obtained a default judgment. The defendants then attempted to garnish the wages of one of the plaintiffs, and it was at this point that the plaintiffs became aware of the situation and hired an attorney.
- A month after mailing the intent to garnish, the defendant sent a notice to the plaintiff’s employer, at which point the plaintiff’s attorney contacted the defendant to set the record straight. The defendant withdrew the garnishment and voided the judgment.
- The plaintiffs filed a suit of their own, and accepted an offer of judgment for $2,002 plus attorney’s fees.
- The plaintiff’s attorney sought $29,139 in fees, which the defendant disputed.
The Ruling: Ultimately, Judge Katherine Menendez of the District Court for the District of Minnesota disagreed with the plaintiff’s attorney about the hourly rate he should receive and the amount of hours he should be compensated for with respect to working on this case.
- Judge Menendez lowered the hourly rate from the $450 sought by the attorney to $350 per hour because the plaintiff’s attorney did not provide enough evidence about the prevailing market rates in that area for comparable cases.
- Judge Menendez also reduced the number of hours for which the attorney should be compensated, noting that had the attorney contacted the defendant earlier, the amount of work involved would have been reduced, and that the language in the offer of judgment limited the fees to those in that specific case, not anything incurred that was related to the collection efforts of the defendants.
