Sylvester v. Chaffe McCall, LLP, No. 21-30186 (5th Cir. 2022)
Annotate this CaseThe Fifth Circuit vacated the award of attorney's fees in this bankruptcy action and remanded for further proceedings. The court held that a court may compensate an attorney under 11 U.S.C. 330(a) only for services requiring legal expertise that a trustee would not generally be expected to perform without an attorney's assistance. In this case, the bankruptcy court failed to apply the proper legal standard in two respects. First, the bankruptcy court appeared to permit Chaffe to recover for the performance of ordinary trustee duties because of the successful result of the bankruptcy proceeding. Second, the bankruptcy court ignored that the burden rests on the attorney requesting compensation under section 330(a) to justify the services rendered.
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