Property Owner's 'Never-Ending' Demands Resulted in Hours Billed, Say Plaintiffs

Plaintiffs STC Two and Global Signal Acquisitions’ motion for attorneys’ fees and costs totaling $134,886.50 represented “reasonably expended” hours billed “especially in light of Defendant’s actions in unnecessarily prolonging every step of the litigation,” said their reply memorandum Thursday (docket 2:23-cv-00764) in U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio in Columbus. The plaintiffs were responding to the defendant’s opposition to their motion for “excessive hours” billed, said the reply. The plaintiffs' Feb. 24, 2023, fraud complaint (see 2302280015) alleged Thomas Branham “willfully breached” a lease with STC for a 2,500-square-foot section of his property that employees of Global Signal, STC’s attorney-in-fact for the cellsite, had been accessing for over 20 years when he installed and refused to remove a padlock on the gate at the entrance to the site. The court granted summary judgment to STC Two and Global Signal in an award of attorneys’ fees pursuant to the terms of the lease and their motion for a permanent injunction against Branham from blocking or otherwise interfering with plaintiffs’ access to the tower. In his May 23 opposition to the motion for attorneys' fees (see 2405240038), Branham conceded that plaintiffs’ hourly rates of $399.57, $399.05 and $304.77 were reasonable but said the 370 hours billed were “excessive.” In reply, the plaintiffs said the hours expended on the case were “reasonable," and that all were required "to move the case forward and prove Plaintiffs’ claims, to comply with the Court’s directives, to attend various conferences, ‘some of which Defendant simply refused to attend,’” and in direct response to Branham’s “ever-changing settlement demands,” his “bad faith actions” -- such as filing a counterclaim -- and “misguided litigation tactics, including court-mandated conferences." Branham’s “unreasonable and never-ending demands, which had absolutely no basis whatsoever under the Lease or the law, caused the continued litigation of a case Plaintiffs never wanted to file in the first place,” the reply said. The plaintiffs request that the court award attorneys’ fees of $134,866.50 and an award of costs of $2,214.50, it said. The sum doesn’t include the time and money spent “to combat the latest round of baseless arguments” advanced by Branham, which the plaintiffs are willing to forego, it said.