Case Detail
Case Title | Louise Trauma Center LLC v. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
District | District of Maryland | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
City | Baltimore | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Case Number | 1:2023cv01561 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Date Filed | 2023-06-09 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Date Closed | 2024-08-28 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Judge | Judge Richard D. Bennett | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Plaintiff | Louise Trauma Center LLC | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Case Description | Louise Trauma Center submitted a FOIA request to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for records concerning distance training given to newly-hired asylum officers from January 2020 to the present. Louise Trauma Center also requested a fee waiver. The agency acknowledged receipt of the request but after hearing nothing further from the agency, Louise Trauma Center filed suit. Complaint issues: Failure to respond within statutory time limit, Litigation - Attorney's fees | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Defendant | United States Citizenship and Immigration Services | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Documents | Docket Complaint Opinion/Order [21] FOIA Project Annotation: In another one of a slew of attorney's fees cases brought by Louse Trauma Center, a federal court in Maryland has ruled that while David Cleveland, the attorney who represented LTC, was eligible for attorney's fees, the court reduced the fee request by 50 percent to reflect a reduction in the hourly rate charged by Cleveland and the excess of hours charged, after rejecting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' argument that because Judge Dabney Friedrich of the District Court for the District of Columbia had recently shown skepticism of LTC's eligibility for attorney's fees in a case before her, Judge Richard Bennett of the District Court in Maryland should rule the same way. In the case before Bennett, LTC had asked for $43,000 in fees for its litigation regarding several FOIA requests it had submitted to USCIS. LTC later raised the amount to $54,560,adding its claim for litigating the attorney's fees issue. Bennett found that the four-factor test was more or less even but decided LTC qualified for attorney's fees. Cleveland had asked for an hourly rate of $620. Because he had more than 30 years of experience as an attorney, he had qualified for such a rate in earlier cases. However, Bennett found the rate too high and lowered it to $475 an hour, based on the local rules. Bennett also lowered LTC's request for 88 hours of work as unsupported and lowered it to half that amount. He noted that "in general, the Center's billing records fail to provide adequately specific descriptions as to the tasks performed, inhibiting the Court's determination of reasonableness."
Issues: Litigation - Attorney's fees - Eligibility | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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