Filed: Feb. 27, 2020
Latest Update: Feb. 27, 2020
Summary: ORDER DOMINIC W. LANZA , District Judge . Pending before the Court is the motion for an award of attorneys' fees under 42 U.S.C. 406(b), submitted by Plaintiff's counsel, Eric Slepian ("Counsel"), which the Commissioner does not oppose. 1 (Doc. 30.) Counsel seeks $13,394.75 in 406(b) fees, which equates to 25% of Plaintiff's past-due benefits. (Doc. 30 at 1-2; Doc. 31-1 at 3.) The client-attorney fee agreement provides for a contingency fee—Plaintiff agreed that the attorneys' fee wou
Summary: ORDER DOMINIC W. LANZA , District Judge . Pending before the Court is the motion for an award of attorneys' fees under 42 U.S.C. 406(b), submitted by Plaintiff's counsel, Eric Slepian ("Counsel"), which the Commissioner does not oppose. 1 (Doc. 30.) Counsel seeks $13,394.75 in 406(b) fees, which equates to 25% of Plaintiff's past-due benefits. (Doc. 30 at 1-2; Doc. 31-1 at 3.) The client-attorney fee agreement provides for a contingency fee—Plaintiff agreed that the attorneys' fee woul..
More
ORDER
DOMINIC W. LANZA, District Judge.
Pending before the Court is the motion for an award of attorneys' fees under 42 U.S.C. § 406(b), submitted by Plaintiff's counsel, Eric Slepian ("Counsel"), which the Commissioner does not oppose.1 (Doc. 30.) Counsel seeks $13,394.75 in § 406(b) fees, which equates to 25% of Plaintiff's past-due benefits. (Doc. 30 at 1-2; Doc. 31-1 at 3.)
The client-attorney fee agreement provides for a contingency fee—Plaintiff agreed that the attorneys' fee would be 25% of all past-due benefits awarded to her. (Doc. 30-1 at 8.) This is unsurprising, as 25% contingency fee agreements are nearly ubiquitous in the context of social security appeals. Gisbrecht v. Barnhart, 535 U.S. 789, 802-04 (2002).
Section 406(b) "calls for court review" of contingency fee agreements. Id. at 807-08. "Congress has provided one boundary line: Agreements are unenforceable to the extent that they provide for fees exceeding 25 percent of the past-due benefits." Id. "Within the 25 percent boundary, as petitioners in this case acknowledge, the attorney for the successful claimant must show that the fee sought is reasonable for the services rendered." Id.
The Court must determine whether it is appropriate to reduce Counsel's recovery "based on the character of the representation and the results the representative achieved" by assessing, for example, whether Counsel is "responsible for delay" or whether "the benefits are large in comparison to the amount of time counsel spent on the case."2 Id. at 808. "In this regard, the court may require the claimant's attorney to submit, not as a basis for satellite litigation, but as an aid to the court's assessment of the reasonableness of the fee yielded by the fee agreement, a record of the hours spent representing the claimant and a statement of the lawyer's normal hourly billing charge for noncontingent-fee cases." Id.
The Court will require Counsel to produce a record of the hours spent representing Plaintiff to aid in the Court's reasonableness assessment.
Accordingly,
IT IS ORDERED that by March 13, 2020, Counsel shall file a supplement to the request for fees containing a record of the hours spent representing Plaintiff.
