That’s the lesson coming out of the Beastie Boys v. Monster Energy decision (available here) from the Southern District of New York. The general “American Rule” is that a successful litigant is not entitled to recover its attorney’s fees from its opponent absent a contractual or statutory right to recover such fees. In Beastie Boys, the Beastie Boys prevailed at trial on their copyright infringement and Lanham Act claims. Both the Copyright and Lanham Act provide for the recovery of attorney’s fees in certain instances. The Beastie Boys sought to recover $2.3 million in attorney’s fees from the defendant (Monster) for what the Court described as “flagrant” copyright infringement.
The Court ultimately only awarded $667,000, slashing amounts relating to time spent on “tenuous[ly] relevant discovery,” defending a “problematic aspect” of an expert’s report, an “unsuccessful Daubert challenge to one of Monster’s expert witnesses,” “abandoned” claims, and the decision of the Court not to award attorney’s fees on the Lanham Act claim. The Court also noted that there was “partner-heavy staffing” with the firm billing “nearly 2.5 times as many partner hours as associate hours” (the partners billed out at $675/hour, with associates ranging from $505-325/hour).
“Here, the Court’s review of [the firm’s] bills suggests that the Beastie Boys opted to pay for, and received, the Cadillac Escalade, not the Honda Civic.” The court applied a 30% across the board reduction, then reduced the amount by another 20% to reflect work relating to the Lanham Act claim. This left a $1.3 million fee. The Court then slashed this number by 50% in considering “the extent to which a fee award here would further the goals of the Copyright Act,” to come to the $667,000 final award. (This amount was tacked onto the $1.2 million damages award against Monster, plus the amounts Monster had to pay for its own attorneys).