[Mexico]
[Petition granted] [Attorneys fees and costs]
In Munoz
v Diaz, 2023 WL 139732 ( S.D. Georgia, 2023) in a prior Order in this
case, the Court granted the Petition for the return of H.E.P.B. and E.I.P.B.
the children of Petitioner and Respondent, to Petitioner’s custody in Mexico. Before
the Court was the Petitioner’s Motion and Application for Award of Fees and
Costs. Petitioner
requesting $69,513.75 in attorneys’ fees and $7,077.42 in costs and expenses,
for a total award request of $76,591.17. Respondent failed to file any response
or to voice any opposition thereto.
The Court
observed that the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has “read the statutory
text as creating a strong presumption in favor of fee-shifting, rebuttable only
by a showing from the losing respondent that an award of attorney’s fees, costs,
and expenses would be clearly inappropriate.” Rath v.
Marcoski, 898 F.3d 1306, 1311
(11th Cir. 2018). The Eleventh Circuit has suggested that there are two
circumstances under which an award under Section 9007(b)(3) is
“clearly inappropriate.” The first is
when “a fee award would impose such a financial hardship that it would
significantly impair the respondent’s ability to care for the child.” Id.
The second is when “a respondent had a good faith belief that [his] actions in
removing or retaining a child were legal or justified.” The “substantial burden
of establishing that a fee award is clearly inappropriate” lies with the losing
respondent.
The Court’s
inquiry is guided by the lodestar framework. See Fuentes-Rangel, 2015 WL 12999707, at *1 (citing Distler
v. Distler, 26 F. Supp. 2d 723,
727 (D.N.J. 1998)); see also Moonga, 2018 WL 4026020, at *2; Neves v.
Neves, 637 F. Supp. 2d 322,
339 (W.D.N.C. 2009) Michael Manely was the founding attorney of the Manely Firm and
has nearly thirty-three years of experience. He practiced primarily in the
metro-Atlanta area, and specialized in “family law, international family law,
and Hague Abduction Convention work in the United States,” and he “served as an
expert witness on Hague Abduction Convention matters. He billed at a rate of
$550 per hour. David Purvis was a partner in the Manely Firm, based in
Savannah, Georgia, and had roughly twelve years of experience. According to his
affidavit, his practice focused exclusively on family law, and he handled
“numerous complex family law cases and argued before the Georgia Supreme Court
on issues involving assisted reproductive technologies and other cutting[-]edge
issues in family law. He billed at a rate of $420 per hour. As to Michael
Manely, because of his experience with Hague Convention cases (in addition to
his years of practice and his status as the founding partner in his firm), the
Court found $375 per hour to be a reasonable hourly rate for him in the
Savannah market. As to David Purvis, based on years of experience, the type of
work he contributed to the case, and the fact that he was known to the Court to
have previous experience with this specific type of case, the Court found that
he should be compensated at a rate of $325 per hour. The Court awarded Petitioner
$48,940.02 in fees and expenses against Respondent.
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