Texas Courts Move Closer to Federal Standard in Proving Up Attorneys' Fees

Federal court practitioners, particularly those appearing in bankruptcy court, are familiar with the requirements of the lodestar method for proving up attorneys' fees. Under Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc., 488 F.2d 714 (5th Cir. 1974) and subsequent cases, attorneys were used to producing contemporaneous time sheets in sufficient detail to describe the work performed and the rate charged. For many years, practice in Texas state courts seemed much looser in that an attorney could simply state that he was an expert and opine that an amount of attorneys' fees was reasonable. In 2012, the Texas Supreme Court expressly endorsed the lodestar method for calculating attorneys' fees in El Apple I, Ltd. v. Olivas, 370 S.W.3d 757 (Tex. 2012). A new opinion from the Austin Court of Appeals reinforces that lodestar review cannot be evaded by redacting time entries to the point that they are meaningless. Person v. MC-Simpsonville, SC-1-UT, LLC, 2021 Tex. App. LEXIS 7155 (Tex. App.--Austin, 8/27/21).  

A Story of Lawyers Behaving Badly

Here, the Court grapples with an inheritance—the latest chapter of a litigation odyssey that began over a decade ago in a different domain.

Adv. No. 18-1091, Kansas City Southern Railway Company vs. Luz Chavez vs. Rosenthal & Watson, P.C. (Bankr. W.D. Tex. 1/31/20), p.1.  The opinion can be found here.

To the outsider, proceedings in bankruptcy court may seem like lawyers talking in incomprehensible jargon while the judge looks down from on high staring Sphinx-like until called upon to make a ruling. However, there is a part of trial work that applies to bankruptcy as well and that is telling stories. The lawyers each spin their tales through arguments, witnesses and exhibits. The judge then takes the raw material the lawyers have given him and fashions it into his own tale.  This case is a tragic tale of clients and some lawyers who failed to serve them well.

Note: on the cold light of the digital page, as drafted by the judge and his clerks, the story takes on clear heroes and villains. In this post, I do not seek to judge the parties, the judge has already done that. Instead, I am re-telling a story that I heard from a judge and found compelling.

Creative Lawyers Thwarted in ASARCO Workaround Attempts

One of the panels at the recent Fifth Circuit Bench-Bar Conference featured Judge Craig Gargotta and Stephen Rosenblatt discussing fee issues raised by Barron & Newburger, P.C. v. Texas Skyline, Ltd. and Baker Botts v. ASARCO.  While I was personally interested in hearing the discussion about my own case, the really interesting part involved what creative lawyers are doing to try to work around the ASARCO decision.    

In the ASARCO case, the reorganized debtor caused Baker Botts to spend about $5 million in attorney time defending its fee application.  Both the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court ruled that these services were not compensable because the American Rule provides that parties must bear their own fees absent a statute or contract and 11 U.S.C. Sec. 330 did not allow fees for defending a fee application.    Thus, Baker Botts had to eat the cost of establishing its entitlement to fees in one of the most extraordinarily successful cases of all time.

This has left some creative lawyers wondering how they can protect themselves from the expense of a costly fee battle.    However, two recent decisions from the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware have thrown cold water on these attempts.