On May 15, 2025, Justice Cohen of the New York County Commercial Division issued a decision in CLNC 2019-FL1 Funding, LLC v. Bennett, 2025 NY Slip Op. 31793(U), denying an attorneys’ fees request for failure adequately to describe and justify the work done, explaining:
Before ordering one party to pay another party’s attorneys’ fees, the court always has the authority and responsibility to determine that the claim for fees is reasonable. Underlying this responsibility is ‘the traditional authority of the courts to supervise the charging of fees for legal services under the courts’ inherent and statutory power to regulate the practice of law.
The determination of what constitutes a reasonable attorney’s fee is a matter within the sound discretion of the Supreme Court. the attorney bears the burden of establishing the reasonable value of the services rendered, based upon a showing of the hours reasonably expended and the prevailing hourly rate for similar legal work in the community. Appropriate factors include the time and labor required, the difficulty of the issues involved, and the skill and effectiveness of counsel.
Plaintiff’s application—seeking $975,620.76 in attorney’s fees and costs, plus interest at the Default Rate (12.15480%), totaling $1,064,105.20—is plainly deficient. Plaintiff submits the affirmation of counsel and redacted invoices sent by McDermott to Plaintiff for work on this case through March 31, 2025. However, the affirmation only states that “[i]n my judgment, and based on my years of experience, the number of hours expended on the case and the services performed by McDermott attorneys and paraprofessionals for the benefit of Plaintiff were reasonable and necessary. In addition, I believe the billable rates for the attorneys who worked on this matter are in line with the billable rates for attorneys with similar experience at comparable firms in the New York City market.”
Plaintiff has failed to provide any basis for that conclusion. Specifically, Plaintiff failed to disclose the position of each attorney identified in each of the bills, the hourly rate of each person identified, and the description of any of the work performed by each person, and the prevailing hourly rate for similar legal work in the community, all of which is commonly included in fee applications this Court has received in other cases. Moreover, the invoices submitted by Plaintiff contain complete redactions of the description” of work performed.
Plaintiff’s failure to indicate the position of each of the 25 attorneys who worked on the matter, their billing rates, the reasonableness of those rates, combined with the redactions of all descriptions of all the work performed has denied this Court (and opposing counsel) any ability to assess whether the charges are improper, cumulative, duplicative and/or unnecessary.
This supporting information is particularly important given the magnitude of the fee request in what seems to be a straightforward action to enforce a guarantee that was resolved by summary judgment a little more than a year after filing of the Complaint. While Plaintiff submits that approximately 15,000 documents were exchanged and seven depositions were taken, and that the parties engaged in mediation, the Court notes that this action had only two motions and one of those was withdrawn by Defendant. In those circumstances, Plaintiff’s application for $975,620.76 (plus interest) requires, at a minimum, substantially more explanation than is provided in the submissions made thus far.
Rather than denying the fee application outright, which would prejudice Plaintiff, the Court will allow counsel an opportunity to cure the deficiencies noted above and to persuade the Court that the fee request is reasonable in the context of this case.
(Internal quotations and citations omitted).