A former Clean the World Foundation employee should receive about half of the fees and costs he sought after only partially prevailing in his D.C. wage case, a magistrate judge recommended.

What happened

A D.C. federal magistrate judge recommended that Clean the World Foundation Inc. pay former employee Nikola Sobot $57,879.38 in attorney fees and costs after Sobot partially prevailed in a wage dispute, rejecting the employer's bid to deny fees outright but cutting the request to reflect his limited success.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh said Sobot qualified for a fee award under the D.C. Wage Payment and Collection Law because he won at least part of his case, but that his more than $90,000 request overstated the results he achieved. The recommendation would award $57,675 in fees and $204.38 in costs.

Sobot worked for Clean the World Foundation from August 2019 until January 2022, during which the organization reduced his salary three times before later restoring it, and terminated his employment in January 2022. He sued several months later, asserting claims under the D.C. Wage Payment and Collection Law, the D.C. Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act, and common-law theories for breach of contract and unjust enrichment.

Judge Tanya Chutkan previously ruled for Clean the World Foundation on most claims, but Sobot prevailed on one salary-increase theory and kept a November 2019 salary-decrease theory alive. The foundation later agreed, without conceding liability on the salary-decrease claim, to tender $23,334.05 in potentially recoverable damages, leaving attorney fees as the remaining fight.

Judge Sharbaugh found counsel's $750 hourly rate reasonable and rejected Clean the World Foundation's suggestion that the fee request should be denied entirely. But he said Sobot's voluntary 25% reduction did not account for his limited success on the wage and contract counts, and that fee shifting calls for "rough justice" rather than a line-by-line accounting.

The court also declined Clean the World Foundation's targeted attacks on billing entries, including objections based on block billing, allegedly excessive time, discovery conduct and rejected settlement offers. Judge Sharbaugh acknowledged that Sobot's counsel had "dropped the ball" on written discovery for a time, but said that did not justify wiping out discovery-related fees.

For work on the fee motions themselves, Judge Sharbaugh recommended the same proportional approach, reducing fees-on-fees to 50%. The recommendation now goes to Judge Chutkan, and any party objecting to it must do so within 14 days of receiving the report.