Merrick v. District of Columbia

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• noting that, in the affidavits that practitioners submitted in support of the Merrick plaintiffs fee petition, the practitioners documented rates that they charged or rates that had at some point “been found to be reasonable”
• reducing fees, for example, where litigant filed “five different motions to amend a single filing”
• awarding plaintiff’s counsel fees at a reduced rate for clerical and paralegal-type work such as scanning, copying, paginating, faxing, forwarding, and filing
• “Since an attorney’s total' fee award is determined by multiplying the number of hours expended by the hourly rate, reducing the Laffey rates to reflect the brevity of the case improperly accounts for the length of the proceedings twice.”
• “As a general matter, clerical and administrative services amount to nonbillable overhead. . . . [S]everal courts in this District have adopted [a] middle- ground approach . . . by awarding solo practitioners and small-firm attorneys’ fees for clerical work at a reduced rate”
• “As a general matter, clerical and administrative services amount to nonbillable overhead. . . . [S]everal courts in this District have adopted [a] middle- ground approach . . . by awarding solo practitioners and small-firm attorneys’ fees for clerical work at a reduced rate”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).