Mountjoy v. Bank of America
Annotate this CaseIn seeking an attorney fee award in this wrongful foreclosure case, plaintiffs Calvin and Tracy Mountjoy sought a lodestar sum of $308,425 for over 760 hours of attorney and law student work billed at hourly rates ranging from $450 to $200. Concluding that “well over 70% of the billing entries” submitted in support of the attorney fee request were flawed in one or more respects, the trial court reduced the number of hours claimed by 70 percent, to 228. Thereafter, applying a “blended” billing rate of $260 per hour to the reduced number of hours, the court awarded the Mountjoys $59,334.60 in attorney fees. The Mountjoys appealed the fee award, but the Court of Appeal rejected most of their arguments. However, the Court concluded the trial court did abuse its discretion in basing the award on a 70 percent across-the-board reduction in the number of hours claimed. "Even assuming the trial court was correct in finding that well over 70 percent of the time entries underlying the fee request were flawed in one manner or another, there is no reasonable basis for concluding that the time entries the court found were flawed actually included 70 percent of the total time for which the Mountjoys sought compensation. Thus, the trial court's reduction in compensable hours was arbitrary and may have swept too broadly, denying the Mountjoys compensation for time claimed in billing entries that were not flawed." The Court reversed the order on the Mountjoys' fee motion and remanded the case back to the trial court for further consideration.
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