Fee Request Reduced For Excessive Hourly Rates And For Overbroad Discovery Requests.
In an August 8, 2024 post by some writers for the Business Insider, they report that MyPillow mogul Mike Lindell—who supposedly offered to pay $5 million to any person who could disprove his cyber data and other data relating to the November 2020 election—lost a challenge to Robert Zeidman, with an arbitration panel awarding Mr. Zeidman $5 million and with a Minnesota district judge confirming the award (although an appeal has been filed). Then, in In re Lindell Management LLC Litigation, Case No. 23-cv-1433 (JRT/DJF) Doc. No. 98 (fee award order filed 8/8/24), U.S. Magistrate Judge Dulce J. Foster confronted Mr. Zeidman’s request for reimbursement of attorney’s fees incurred in bringing a motion to compel where deficient discovery responses were apparently submitted by the respondent LLC. We post to show you how the thinking of one federal magistrate on how to handle such a request, with fee entitlement not at issue because it arose under FRCP 37.
Magistrate Judge Foster observed that respondent basically admitted some discovery sanctions were in order, but not the $12,800 claimed by Mr. Zeidman’s attorneys for 16.1 hours at $800/hour (especially given the venue was the Twin Cities legal community). The magistrate agreed in part, reducing the hourly rate to $400/hour and applying a 30% reduction for some overbroad, scaled-back discovery requests, such that the final fee award was $4,508.
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