Pura Scents, Inc. v. Atmos Fragrance, Inc. et al — Court Approves Plaintiff’s Fee Application in Part and Reduces the Total Fees Awarded from $18,439.50 to $9,747.50

Background

After Atmos Fragrance, Inc. and Kristen Knight failed to serve initial disclosures or respond to discovery requests, Pura Scents, Inc. filed two motions to compel that included requests for attorneys' fees. Each motion was about three pages long. Before the court ruled, the defendants corrected the deficiencies, but the court nevertheless granted Pura's fee request because Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(a)(5)(A) requires a fee award when discovery is produced only after a motion to compel is filed. The court ordered the parties to confer on the amount and permitted Pura to file a fee application if they could not agree.

Pura's counsel emailed the defendants' counsel with a rough calculation of between about $11,800 and $18,000 and offered to resolve the dispute for the lower $11,800 figure, but the defendants declined, in part because Pura had not listed billing entries for drafting the two three-page motions. After Pura provided supporting documentation and the defendants did not respond, Pura filed its application four days later seeking $18,439.50: $13,479.50 for 18.1 hours preparing the motions to compel and $4,690 for 6.4 hours preparing the fee application itself.

The three attorneys who worked on the filings billed at discounted rates ranging from $615 to $815 per hour, and Pura contended the rates and hours were reasonable, citing its firm's reputation as a top-tier trial firm. Atmos and Ms. Knight opposed the application, arguing the rates were unreasonable, the hours disproportionate to the work performed, the time spent on the fee application excessive and beyond the relief authorized, and that Pura's counsel did not adequately confer before filing.

The Court’s Holding

Applying the lodestar method, the court first held that Pura's hourly rates were reasonable. The court relied on market evidence including AMLaw 1-200 percentile reports showing a $873 average partner rate in Salt Lake City and an American Intellectual Property Law Association chart with a $560 third-quartile rate for comparable firms, together with the firm's reputation and the attorneys' credentials as highly credentialled partners with multiple decades of experience. The court concluded the $615 to $815 rates reflect what similarly skilled attorneys can charge.

The court then held that the hours claimed were not reasonable. The two motions to compel were short-form discovery motions limited to 500 words by local rules and addressed simple, unopposed discovery failures, so they did not require extensive drafting or multiple rounds of partner review. Although the 4.2 and 4.3 hours the drafting attorney spent on the two motions were generally reasonable, roughly ten additional hours of post-drafting work were not; the block-billed entries made it impossible to verify what related to the motions, and the defendants should not bear the cost of bringing a new attorney up to speed. The court awarded 8.5 hours for drafting at $775 per hour and one hour for review at $815 per hour, for a motions-to-compel award of $7,402.50.

For the fee application itself, the court found the 6.4 hours were not supported by adequate billing records, were disproportionate—adding about 60% to the underlying award—and were filed after only minimal, eleventh-hour conferral. Applying a 50% reduction, the court awarded $2,345 for the fee application. The total award is $9,747.50, payable within 30 days of the order.

Key Takeaways

• Hourly rates of $615 to $815 for experienced intellectual-property partners were upheld as reasonable based on AMLaw 1-200 and AIPLA market data, even though the firm was not itself an AMLaw 1-200 firm.
• Short-form discovery motions limited to 500 words do not justify extensive drafting or repeated partner review; the court awarded only 8.5 hours for drafting two such motions plus one hour of review, and declined to shift the cost of onboarding a new attorney to the opposing party.
• Block billing and inadequate documentation can produce substantial fee reductions because the court cannot determine whether the time was reasonably spent.
• Fees for preparing a fee application may be cut by 50% when the request is disproportionate to the underlying award, unsupported by detailed billing records, and filed after minimal conferral.
• A fee request should not become a second major litigation, and courts will reduce awards where conferral efforts were minimal and occurred at the eleventh hour.

Why It Matters

The decision gives IP litigators in the District of Utah concrete guidance on documenting fee applications: market-rate evidence can sustain high hourly rates, but block-billed, poorly itemized time entries invite across-the-board reductions even for experienced counsel. It also illustrates that fees for litigating the fee request itself are recoverable but will be scrutinized for proportionality and documentation.

More broadly, the ruling reinforces that Rule 37(a)(5)(A) fee awards are mandatory once discovery is produced after a motion to compel, yet the amount remains subject to lodestar scrutiny, and parties should maintain contemporaneous, detailed billing records and engage in meaningful conferral to avoid reductions.