On March 9, 2026, Justice Patel of the New York County Commercial Division issued a decision in Starwood Prop. Mtge. Sub-2, L.L.C. v. Stalcup, 2026 NY Slip Op. 30869(U), reducing a fee award because of the failure to show that qualifications of non-attorney personnel, explaining:
Attorneys’ fees are merely an incident of litigation and thus are not recoverable absent a specific contractual provision or statutory authority. The reasonableness of legal fees “can be determined only after consideration of the difficulty of the issues and the skill required to resolve them; the lawyers’ experience, ability and reputation; the time and labor required; the amount involved and benefit resulting to the client from the services; the customary fee charges for similar services; the contingency or certainty of compensation; the results obtained and the responsibility involved. An award of reasonable attorneys’ fees is within the sound discretion of the court.
. . . Defendant challenges the reasonableness of such fees. Upon review of the foregoing submissions, and in light of the standards set forth herein, the Court finds that the amounts sought are not entirely reasonable.
With respect to non-attorney billing rates, Defendant argues non-attorney billing rates are generally limited to $200 per hour, and that Plaintiff fails to provide details as to the non-attorneys’ experience or credentials. Plaintiff rebuts that Defendant’s cited cases do not reflect the prevailing market rate for comparable non-attorney services and that above-market nonattorney rates are justified when work in the case was unusually complex. The Court declines to adopt a bright-line rule limiting non-attorney billing rates to $200 per hour as doing so would ignore non-attorney specialization, experience, and complexity of services rendered. However, the Court agrees with Defendant that Plaintiff has failed to provide sufficient information to substantiate non-attorney billing rates with non-attorneys’ experience and credentials. Accordingly, the Court finds a reduction in the amount requested in attorneys’ fees is both reasonable and appropriate.
(Internal quotations and citations omitted).