MEMORANDUM OPINION & ORDER Before the Court is Defendants’ motion for attorneys’ fees and costs under 17 U.S.C. §505. The Court on February 26, 2021, ordered Charles to file a brief to address the size of fees requested by Defendants, which amounted to $872,939.66 in fees and $100,918.71 in costs, a total of $973,858.37. For the reasons that follow, the Court awards Defendants $28,750 in attorneys’ fees and $92 in costs, a total of $28,842. The Court further concludes that Charles’s counsel is jointly and severally liable for the payment of this award. I. Background The Court presumes the parties’ familiarity with the facts of this case, which are explained in greater detail in the Court’s prior orders and Judge Parker’s report and recommendation. Dkt. Nos. 106, 139, 150. In brief, Plaintiff Christian Charles, an award-winning writer, director, and producer, alleged copyright claims against Jerry Seinfeld and several related Defendants related to the show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Dkt. No. 106 at 1-2. The Court ultimately dismissed the second amended complaint on statute-of-limitations grounds, explaining that Charles was on notice of his claims since at least 2012 but did not file suit until 2018, far outside the three-year statute of limitations for such claims. Id. at 8. Defendants, represented by the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP, filed a motion for attorneys’ fees under 17 U.S.C. §505 on October 15, 2019, Dkt. No. 109, a motion that the Court denied with leave to refile pending resolution of Charles’s appeal of the Court’s order, Dkt. No. 120. The Second Circuit affirmed dismissal of Charles’s claims on June 18, 2020. Dkt. No. 122. Upon additional briefing of the motion for attorneys’ fees, the Honorable Katharine H. Parker, U.S. Magistrate Judge, issued a report and recommendation, recommending that the Court deny Defendants’ motion in significant part because Charles’s claims were not objectively unreasonable. Dkt. No. 139 at 13, 16-17. The Court on February 26, 2021, sustained Defendants’ objections to the report and recommendation, concluding that Charles’s claims were objectively unreasonable and that other relevant factors favored awarding Defendants’ attorneys’ fees. Op. & Order, Dkt. No. 150. Because Charles had not disputed the size of Defendants’ requested fees and costs in its briefing or oral argument before Judge Parker nor in its briefing to this Court, the Court ordered Charles to file a brief on “the amount of the fee award,” with particular attention to the relative financial strength of the parties. Op. & Order at 9. Charles filed a brief on the size of the fee award on March 12, 2021. Pl. Br. on Size of Fee, Dkt. No. 151. Defendants filed a response on March 19, 2021, in which they requested that Charles’s counsel be held jointly and severally liable for the fees. Defs. Br. on Size of Fee, Dkt. No. 152. The Court then received further briefing from both parties on the issue of joint and several liability of Charles’s counsel. Pl. Sur-Reply, Dkt. No. 155; Def. Sur-Reply, Dkt. No. 158. Last, the Court on December 21, 2021, ordered Charles to submit by December 27, 2021, Charles’s financial documents referenced in his brief and attached declaration. Dkt. No. 161. The Court received those documents under seal on December 22, 2021. II. Charles’s request to reconsider the Court’s February 26 order Though the Court expressly instructed Charles to “file a brief not to exceed ten pages addressing the size of the fee award” requested by Defendants, Charles devotes much of his brief to relitigating the Court’s conclusion that his claim was objectively unreasonable. Pl. Br. on Size of Fee at 3-6. Because this amounts to a request for the Court to reconsider a prior order determining a motion, the Court construes these portions of the brief as a motion for reconsideration governed by Local Civil Rule 6.3. Local Rule 6.3 is intended to “ensure the finality of decisions and to prevent the practice of a losing party examining a decision and then plugging the gaps of a lost motion with additional matters.” Medisim Ltd. v. BestMed LLC, No. 10-CV-2463 (SAS), 2012 WL 1450420, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 23, 2012) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). “The standard for granting such a motion is strict, and reconsideration will generally be denied unless the moving party can point to controlling decisions or data that the court overlooked — matters, in other words, that might reasonably be expected to alter the conclusion reached by the court.” Shrader v. CSX Transp., Inc., 70 F.3d 255, 257 (2d Cir. 1995); accord Kolel Beth Yechiel Mechil of Tartikov, Inc. v. YLL Irrevocable Tr., 729 F.3d 99, 104 (2d Cir. 2013) (“A motion for reconsideration should be granted only when the defendant identifies an intervening change of controlling law, the availability of new evidence, or the need to correct a clear error or prevent manifest injustice.” (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)). The decision whether to grant such a motion “rests within the sound discretion of the district court.” Callari v. Blackman Plumbing Supply, Inc., 988 F. Supp. 2d 261, 287 (E.D.N.Y. 2013). That high bar is not satisfied here. Charles presents the same authorities and arguments as the Court considered and rejected in its prior order dated February 26, 2021. First, Charles argues that Defendants have not presented affirmative evidence of copyright ownership. Yet at the motion to dismiss stage, Defendants had no burden to present such evidence. And Charles’s failure to file suit within the statute of limitations bars his suit from proceeding into discovery. CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, 573 U.S. 1, 7-8 (2014) (explaining the history and purpose of statutes of limitations). Second, Charles refers to the Sixth Circuit’s decision in Everly v. Everly, 958 F.3d 442, 453 (6th Cir. 2020). The Court refers back to its prior conclusion that Everly is entirely consistent with the Second Circuit’s holding in Kwan v. Schlein, 634 F.3d 224 (2d Cir. 2011), and that neither case provides a reasonable basis for believing that Charles’s action was timely filed. Op. & Order at 5-8. Third, Charles argues that the fact he received “repeated warnings” of the basic flaw in his claim does not justify fees. Pl. Br. on Size of Fee at 4. Yet such warnings are an important factor under §505′s fees provision, which “encourages parties with strong legal positions to stand on their rights and deters those with weak ones from proceeding with litigation.” Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 579 U.S. 197, 205 (2016). And fourth, Charles contests the Court’s conclusion that the suit was “opportunistic.” Pl. Br. on Size of Fee at 3-6. The Court concludes, however, that Charles’s suit filed over five years after his ownership claim was repudiated at the same time that Defendants completed a multimillion-dollar deal with Netflix reflects opportunistic litigation, even if Charles’s attempt to first resolve the dispute outside of court provides some mitigation. Op. & Order at 5.1 The Court therefore denies Charles’s requests to reconsider its prior order. III. Defendants’ presumptively reasonable fee A district court exercises “considerable discretion” in awarding attorneys’ fees. Arbor Hill Concerned Citizens Neighborhood Ass’n v. Cnty. of Albany, 522 F.3d 182, 190 (2d Cir. 2008). “The party seeking fees bears the burden of demonstrating that its requested fees are reasonable.” TufAmerica Inc. v. Diamond, No. 12-cv-3529 (AJN), 2016 WL 1029553, at *3 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 9, 2016), reconsideration granted in part, 2016 WL 3866578 (S.D.N.Y. July 12, 2016), and on reconsideration in part, 2018 WL 401510 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 12, 2018) (citing Blum v. Stenson, 465 U.S. 886, 897 (1984)). “Both [the Second Circuit] and the Supreme Court have held that the lodestar — the product of a reasonable hourly rate and the reasonable number of hours required by the case — creates a ‘presumptively reasonable fee.’” Millea v. Metro-North R.R. Co., 658 F.3d 154, 166 (2d Cir. 2011) (quoting Arbor Hill, 522 F.3d at 183). The Court will first evaluate the reasonable number of hours required by the case, and will then turn to the reasonable hourly rate before calculating the resulting reasonable fee. An analysis of hourly rates turns on “what a reasonable, paying client would be willing to pay, given that such a party wishes to spend the minimum necessary to litigate the case effectively.” Bergerson v. N.Y. State Off. of Mental Health, 652 F.3d 277, 289 (2d Cir. 2011) (cleaned up). Generally, an “attorney’s customary billing rate for fee-paying clients is ordinarily the best evidence of” a reasonable hourly rate. In re Stock Exchs. Options Trading Antitrust Litig., No. 99-cv-0962 (RCC), 2006 WL 3498590, at *9 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 4, 2006). As to hours, the Court conducts “a conscientious and detailed inquiry into the validity of the representations that a certain number of hours were usefully and reasonably expended.” Haley v. Pataki, 106 F.3d 478, 484 (2d Cir. 1997) (quoting Lunday v. City of Albany, 42 F.3d 131, 134 (2d Cir. 1994) (per curiam)). In determining whether hours are excessive, “the critical inquiry is whether, at the time the work was performed, a reasonable attorney would have engaged in similar time expenditures.” Samms v. Abrams, 198 F. Supp. 3d 311, 322 (S.D.N.Y. 2016) (quoting Grant v. Martinez, 973 F.2d 96, 99 (2d Cir. 1992)). In calculating fees, the Court also looks at the nature of the legal matter: Complex cases justify higher rates and more hours and resources while simpler cases justify less of each. Arbor Hill, 522 F.3d at 184-87. A. Defendants’ requested fees Despite several opportunities to do so, Charles has repeatedly declined to contest the basis of Defendants’ requested fees. Nevertheless, the Court has an independent obligation to conduct a “conscientious and detailed inquiry” into the reasonableness of a fee award. Lunday, 42 F.3d at 134. Defendants request a staggering $872,939.66 in attorneys’ fees and $100,918.71 in costs. See Kusnetz Suppl. Decl.
