*1 This case comes before the Court on Plaintiff One Step Up, Ltd.'s Supplemental Brief in Support of its Motion for Sanctions [199], and Defendants James L. McMillin, Sr. and James L. McMillin, Jr.'s Motion for Relief from the Court's June 15, 2021 Order and Extension of Discovery Period [200]. For the reasons detailed below, Plaintiff's Motion is GRANTED, and Defendants' Motion is DENIED.

On March 17, 2021, Plaintiff served Defendants McMillin Sr. and McMillin Jr. with interrogatories and requests for production of documents in aid of execution of the judgment issued by this Court. Defendants' written responses were due by April 16, 2021. Neither Defendant provided any responses or objections to Plaintiff's discovery requests.

After Defendants' response deadline passed, Plaintiff's counsel attempted to confer with counsel for Defendants. Specifically, Plaintiff's counsel contacted Defendants' counsel at least three separate times regarding the status of Defendants' discovery responses and agreed to several short extensions to produce those responses. Nevertheless, Defendants still failed to provide any written responses to Plaintiff's discovery requests, so Plaintiff filed this Motion to Compel and for Sanctions on May 11, 2021. Defendants still did not provide any written response to Plaintiff's discovery requests, and they failed to respond to Plaintiff's Motion by the deadline. Accordingly, on June 15, 2021, the Court granted Plaintiff's unopposed Motion, ordering Defendants to comply with Plaintiff's discovery requests within fourteen days [198]. The Court also granted Plaintiff's request for an award of attorneys' fees and instructed Plaintiff to submit a statement of costs and any evidence it wished the Court to consider regarding the attorneys' fees it incurred in bringing its Motion.

I. Plaintiff's Supplemental Brief in Support of Motion for Sanctions [199]

Plaintiff filed its Supplemental Brief in Support of Motion for Sanctions [199], which detailed Plaintiff's counsel's current rates and the time he spent working on this issue. Plaintiff's counsel currently charges $525 per hour for his legal services. (Pl.'s Supp. Br. in Supp. of Mot. for Sanctions, Dkt. [199], at 4.) However, he has a discounted fee arrangement with Plaintiff such that he only charges Plaintiff $350 per hour. (Id.) Plaintiff's counsel contends that he spent 1.1 hours exchanging emails with opposing counsel attempting to obtain discovery responses once it was clear that timely responses were not forthcoming, 1.9 hours drafting Plaintiff's Motion to Compel and for Sanctions, and 3 hours drafting the Supplemental Brief, for a total of 6 hours. (Id. at 3–4.) In addition, Plaintiff's counsel states that he spent an additional 2 hours preparing Plaintiff's opposition to Defendants' Motion for Relief. (Pl.'s Br. in Opp. to Defs.' Mot. for Relief, Dkt. [202], at 10.) Plaintiff therefore asks this Court to order Defendants to pay $4,200, which constitutes Plaintiff's counsel's 8 hours of work at his current hourly rate ($525). (Pl.'s Supp. Br. in Supp. of Mot. for Sanctions, Dkt. [199], at 5; Pl.'s Br. in Opp. to Defs.' Mot. for Relief, Dkt. [202], at 10.)

*2 Defendants object to Plaintiff's Supplemental Brief, arguing that: Plaintiff provided insufficient detail regarding its counsel's services to support its request for fees; the facts detailed by Plaintiff are unrelated to its request for attorneys' fees; and Plaintiff's counsel should have granted Defendants' counsel's request for an extension of time to provide discovery responses. (Defs.' Resp. to Pl.'s Supp. Br., Dkt. [201], at 2–5.)

“The Eleventh Circuit has adopted the lodestar method to assess the reasonableness of attorney's fees, which multiplies the hours reasonably expended by a reasonable hourly rate.” Moore v. Intuitive Surgical, Inc., 2019 WL 10784544, at *2 (M.D. Ga. Apr. 1, 2019) (citation, punctuation, and quotations omitted). The party requesting fees “bears the burden of establishing entitlement and documenting the appropriate hours and hourly rates.” Downtown Sports, Inc. v. Legacy AH, LLC, 2011 WL 13162100, at *18 (N.D. Ga. Mar. 11, 2011) (citation and quotations omitted). “That burden can be satisfied where the fee applicant provides the court with records to show the time spent on the different claims, and the general subject matter of the time expenditures ought to be set out with sufficient particularity so that the district court can assess the time claimed for each activity.” Id. (citation and quotations omitted). The court must assess “both the reasonableness of the rate and of the hours.” Id. (citation omitted).

“A reasonable hourly rate is the prevailing market rate in the relevant legal community for similar services by lawyers of reasonably comparable skills, experience, and reputation.” Norman v. Hous. Auth. of the City of Montgomery, 836 F.2d 1292, 1299 (11th Cir. 1988) (citations omitted). While generally more evidence than just the affidavit of the attorney performing the work is required, “the court may rely on its own judgment and experience to determine an appropriate rate.” Downtown Sports, Inc., 2011 WL 13162100, at *18 (citation omitted). Based on the Court's own judgment and experience, the Court finds that Plaintiff's counsel's $525 rates are reasonable. Defendants do not contend otherwise. However, the Court finds that the actual rate charged, $350 per hour, is the more appropriate rate to award.

Next the Court must determine whether Plaintiff's requested hours are reasonable. Id. (citation omitted). Again, Plaintiff's counsel asserts that he spent 8 hours attempting to obtain discovery responses after the response deadline had passed, drafting the Motion to Compel, drafting the Supplemental Brief, and responding to Defendants' Motion for Relief. (Pl.'s Supp. Br. in Supp. of Mot. for Sanctions, Dkt. [199], at 3–4.) Defendants do not argue that the time spent by Plaintiff's counsel is unreasonable, nor could they credibly do so. The Court finds that Plaintiff's counsel's 8 hours of work is reasonable.

Though Defendants did not argue that Plaintiff's counsel's hourly rate or hours expended were unreasonable, they do argue that “Plaintiff's failure to provide any detailed information to the Court regarding the expenditure of the specific resources required to bring the Motion to Compel should doom Plaintiff's request.” (Defs.' Resp. to Pl.'s Supp. Br., Dkt. [201], at 3.) In other words, Defendants argue that the Court should not grant Plaintiff's request for attorneys' fees because Plaintiff did not specify certain details like the dates Plaintiff's counsel performed his work and what specific services were rendered. (Id. at 2–3.)

*3 Such an argument might be well-taken in a more complicated case or situation in which, for example, multiple attorneys worked and billed time on a series of unrelated projects and subsequently requested fees but failed to delineate who did what and when. In that case, the Court would need more detail regarding each task and the time spent by each attorney on that task to determine which fees were reasonable. See Edelen v. Campbell Soup Co., 265 F.R.D. 676, 694–95 (N.D. Ga. 2010) (concluding that more details were needed in support of defendants' request for attorneys' fees where multiple attorneys worked on motion to compel and related hearing, but documentation did not list how much time each attorney performed for each task or much detail about the nature of the task). But that is plainly not the situation here. To the contrary, Plaintiff's request for attorneys' fees involves work by one attorney on several related tasks, and Plaintiff's Supplemental and Opposition Briefs specifically detailed how much time he spent on each of those tasks. (Pl.'s Supp. Br. in Supp. of Mot. for Sanctions, Dkt. [199], at 3–5; Pl.'s Br. in Opp. to Defs.' Mot. for Relief, Dkt. [202], at 10.) Plaintiff's counsel's declaration, submitted as an exhibit to his Supplemental Brief, provided additional detail on the tasks he completed for which Plaintiff now seeks reimbursement. (Ex. 5, Decl. of David J. Forestner, Dkt. [199-5].) The fact that Plaintiff did not specify the dates on which its counsel completed the work at issue does not doom its request for attorneys' fees, as Defendants contend.

As this Court has already held, but reiterates here, Plaintiff's request for attorneys' fees is GRANTED. The Court now finds that Plaintiff's requested attorneys' fees are reasonable. Accordingly, Defendants are ordered to pay sanctions in the amount of $2,800 to Plaintiff's counsel within fourteen days of the date of this Order.

II. Defendants' Motion for Relief from June 15, 2021 Order [200]

Separately, Defendants filed a motion seeking relief from this Court's June 15, 2021 Order and requesting an extension of the discovery period [200]. In doing so, Defendants outline a series of unfortunate events that they contend inhibited their efforts to comply with Plaintiff's discovery requests, and they ask this Court to rescind or reconsider its earlier Order under Federal Rules 60(b) or 6(b) or the Court's inherent powers and to extend the discovery period. (Defs.' Mot. for Relief, Dkt. [200], at 2–11.)

The Court empathizes with Defendants' counsel for the unfortunate circumstances he and his client have experienced over the last few months. However, those circumstances do not entitle Defendants to either relief from this Court's prior Order or an extension of the discovery period.

First, Defendants' counsel explains that his firm hired two colleagues to assist with Plaintiff's discovery requests, but that one of those colleagues subsequently passed away and another became seriously ill. (Id. at 2–5.) While unfortunate, Defendants' counsel's protestations ignore the fact that he himself has been on the case since Plaintiff's discovery requests were served. In addition, he has represented Defendants for much longer than any of the recently hired colleagues he mentions and is thus far more familiar with the facts and issues than they were or would have been. As a result, he was more than capable of timely preparing Defendants' discovery responses on his own.

Second, Defendants' counsel explains that one of his clients, McMillin Sr., was hospitalized and incapacitated for a lengthy period and was therefore unable to assist his counsel in preparing discovery responses. (Id. at 3–4.) That may be true, but Defendant McMillin Sr. then sat for a deposition on June 8, 2021, which was now approximately seven weeks ago. (Pl.'s Br. in Opp. to Defs.' Mot. for Relief, Dkt. [202], at 2–3, 6.) Accordingly, he has now been healthy enough to assist his counsel in preparing discovery responses for at least seven weeks.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Defendants have still failed to comply with Plaintiff's discovery requests (or this Court's Order, for that matter). Plaintiff served discovery requests on March 17, 2021, over four months ago. (Id. at 1, 3.) Plaintiff's counsel granted Defendants' counsel several extensions of time to respond to the discovery requests. (Id. at 4–5.) When Defendants failed to serve responses by the extended deadlines, Plaintiff filed its Motion to Compel, but promised to withdraw the Motion if Defendants served responses in the following ten days. (Id. at 5.) Defendants did not serve responses in that time or otherwise reply to Plaintiff's Motion to Compel. (Id. at 6.) Then, this Court instructed Defendants to serve their discovery responses within fourteen days of its June 15, 2021 Order. (Id.) Defendants missed that deadline too, instead filing a motion belatedly objecting to Plaintiff's Motion to Compel and seeking relief from the Court's Order and an extension of the discovery period. (Id. at 7.) To the Court's knowledge, Defendants have still failed to comply with Plaintiff's discovery requests and the Court's Order.

*4 The Court will not rescind or reconsider its earlier Order. In addition, the Court will not tolerate any further delay of Defendants' compliance with Plaintiff's discovery requests. Accordingly, Defendants' Motion for Relief [200] is DENIED, and Defendants are ORDERED to serve responses to Plaintiff's discovery requests within seven days of this Order. If Defendants fail to do so, Defendants' counsel will be forced to show cause why he should not be held in contempt for violating the Court's Orders.

For the foregoing reasons, Plaintiff One Step Up, Ltd.'s Supplemental Brief in Support of its Motion for Sanctions [199] is GRANTED and Defendants James L. McMillin, Sr. and James L. McMillin, Jr.'s Motion for Relief from the Court's June 15, 2021 Order and Extension of Discovery Period [200] is DENIED.

Defendants James L. McMillin, Sr. and James L. McMillin, Jr. are hereby ORDERED to pay sanctions in the amount of $2,800 to Plaintiff's counsel within fourteen days of the date of this Order. Defendants are also ORDERED to serve upon Plaintiff, within seven days of entry of this Order, full and complete written answers to Plaintiff's interrogatories and written responses and documents responsive to Plaintiff's requests for production.

SO ORDERED this 26th day of July, 2021.