Gurule v. Land Guardian, Inc.

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One of the plaintiffs in this case rejected a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68 offer of judgment and proceeded to trial, where she prevailed on her Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) claim and was awarded damages and attorney's fees. In this case, the damages she won at trial were lower than the offer she had earlier rejected, and so Rule 68 required her to pay defendants' post-offer costs.The Fifth Circuit joined its sister circuits and held that, in assessing a plaintiff's degree of success under a fee-shifting provision like the FLSA's, a court should consider a plaintiff's rejection of a Rule 68 offer that would have given her more than what she ultimately obtained at trial. The court affirmed the fee award here, because the district court properly considered the Rule 68 offer in its considerable downward adjustment of the lodestar. View "Gurule v. Land Guardian, Inc." on Justia Law