Expert Testimony on Attorney Fees Issues Excluded

Plaintiff C.B. alleged that Defendants Moreno Valley Unified School District and Superintendent Martinrex Kedziora (collectively “MVUSD” or “District”) cornered him on school grounds and tackled and handcuffed him on at least four separate occasions for exhibiting disability-related behavior.

Plaintiffs move for attorneys’ fees as the prevailing party under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. Under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 (“Section 1988”), a Court may, in its discretion, award reasonable attorneys’ fees in a suit seeking to vindicate rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The Defendants filed an opposition to the Plaintiffs’ motion for attorneys’ fees. In support of the opposition, the Defendants filed the declaration of legal fee expert, Grant Stiefel.

Plaintiff filed a motion to strike the Stiefel Declaration, arguing that it contained impermissible legal argument and was inadmissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 702. 

Attorney Fees Expert Witness

Grant Stiefel is an attorney fee consultant, testifying expert, and the principal of Litigation Limited, a boutique legal auditing firm. He has testified as a legal fee expert in over 160 lawsuits, including federal and state courts, private
arbitrations, State Bar courts, and attorney-client fee arbitrations.

He received his juris doctor from the University of Southern California School of Law in 2000.

Want to know more about the challenges Grant Stiefel has faced? Get the full details with our Challenge Study report.

Discussion by the Court

Considering the fact that the Stiefel Declaration is forty-two pages long while the Defendants’ opposition brief is barely four pages long, it appeared to the Court that the Defendants attempted to outsource the job of arguing the opposition to Stiefel, in violation of the Court’s local rules, legal precedent, and the rules of the State Bar. Moreover, Stiefel has not been an active licensee of the bar since 2017.

In other words, the Defendants presented no legal argument in their perfunctory four-page opposition. On the other hand, the Stiefel declaration was replete with impermissible legal arguments. For instance, Stiefel opined that “the Plaintiff’s counsel block-billed 694 hours. At counsel’s requested hourly rates, these block-billed fees total $446,450. Assuming a blockbilling discount rate of twenty percent, the total recommended lodestar reduction
would be a conservative deduction of just 139 hours.”

The Court found that these violations are serious enough to warrant striking the offending declaration. As a result, the Plaintiff’s motion for attorneys’ fees was granted and the Plaintiff’s counsel was awarded $5,303,493.30 in attorneys’ fees.

Held

The Court granted the Plaintiff’s objections and request to strike the declaration of Grant Stiefel.

Key Takeaway:

Legal argument is reserved for the moving papers and should not be inserted into declarations. The Defendants in this case defer to their expert for legal analysis, but legal analysis is not the appropriate role of an expert.

Case Details:

Case Caption:	C.B. V. Moreno Valley Unified School District
Docket Number:	5:21cv194
Court Name:	United States District Court, California Central
Order Date:	October 03, 2025