Federal Law Governs Prejudgment Interest on Fee Awards in Mixed Federal–State Settlements, and Trial Courts Must Explain the Math Behind Across-the-Board Hour Cuts

Case: Morgan Pianko v. General R.V. Center, Inc.
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
Date: 2026-07-07
Panel: Boggs, Kethledge, Thapar (Kethledge, J.)
Posture: Appeal from fee/cost award following Title VII settlement; affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.

Introduction

Morgan Pianko, a former employee at a Michigan General R.V. Center dealership, alleged severe workplace misconduct and retaliation: she claimed her supervisor exposed himself and attempted to force her to have sex at an out-of-town RV show, and that the company’s response effectively forced her out of her job. After administrative proceedings and years of litigation, Pianko settled her remaining claims shortly before trial for $300,000, with attorney’s fees and costs to be determined by the district court under Title VII and Michigan law.

The fee petition was large: Pianko sought $1,509,613.50 for 2,418.9 hours at $600–$675/hour, plus $65,410 in costs (mostly expert-related), and prejudgment interest. The district court awarded a fraction of that. On appeal, the Sixth Circuit addressed (i) the reasonable hourly rate, (ii) categorical time disallowances and an across-the-board reduction, (iii) a further 10% reduction, (iv) prejudgment interest on fees, and (v) expert costs.

Summary of the Opinion

The Sixth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part.

• Hourly rate: affirmed the district court’s selection of $400/hour.
• Hours:
  • affirmed exclusion of 500.2 hours tied primarily to claims and proceedings against supervisor Christopher Miller (including separate state-court matters);
  • reversed exclusion of 93.8 hours labeled “premature trial preparation” (work done during the litigation, with trial imminent at settlement);
  • affirmed a 50% across-the-board reduction for excessive/padded billing, but reversed an unexplained additional 249.2-hour deduction embedded in the district court’s arithmetic.
• Additional 10% reduction: affirmed (primarily due to failure to segregate hours cleanly by claim/defendant).
• Prejudgment interest on fees: affirmed denial; the court held federal law governed in this mixed federal–state settlement posture and found the elevated rate already compensated for delay.
• Expert costs: reversed in part; although documentation was sparse, the record supported awarding at least the conceded portion. Costs increased by $11,848.75.

The court recalculated the district-court fee award as $337,320 and the cost award as $29,314.25, and directed a further fee award reflecting “modest success” on appeal.

Analysis

Precedents Cited

• Hoover v. Provident Life and Acc. Ins. Co., 290 F.3d 801, 809 (6th Cir. 2002)
  Role: Set the abuse-of-discretion standard for reviewing fee/cost awards and denial of prejudgment interest. This framed the entire appellate posture: the panel did not re-do the fee petition from scratch, but tested whether the district court’s choices were explainable and within permissible bounds.
• Waldo v. Consumers Energy Co., 726 F.3d 802, 821 (6th Cir. 2013)
  Role: Restated the lodestar method in the Title VII context—reasonable rate × reasonable hours. The opinion used this as the baseline architecture for assessing every dispute about rates and time.
• Rembert v. A Plus Home Health Care Agency LLC, 986 F.3d 613, 616 (6th Cir. 2021)
  Role: Required a “clear and concise explanation” for reasonable rates and hours. This authority drove the reversal of the unexplained 249.2-hour deduction: even when large reductions are permissible, the district court must show its work.
• Isabel v. City of Memphis, 404 F.3d 404, 416 (6th Cir. 2005)
  Role: Noted that reductions beyond the lodestar are reserved for “rare and exceptional cases” supported by specific record evidence. The panel relied on this cautionary principle but still upheld (i) a 50% hours reduction and (ii) a 10% post-lodestar reduction where the record supported them—underscoring that “rare” does not mean “never,” but does mean “explain and justify.”
• Adcock-Ladd v. Sec'y of Treas., 227 F.3d 343, 350 (6th Cir. 2000)
  Role: Provided the venue-based comparable-lawyer standard for fee rates. The panel used it to evaluate whether $400/hour was within the expected market range for Michigan plaintiff-side employment lawyers.
• Ne. Ohio Coal. for the Homeless v. Husted, 831 F.3d 686, 716 (6th Cir. 2016)
  Role: Approved the evidentiary sources for determining rates (submissions, analogous awards, bar guidelines, and the court’s experience). This supported the district court’s reliance on broader market indicators rather than accepting a top-percentile request.
• Linneman v. Vita-Mix Corp., 970 F.3d 621, 630 (6th Cir. 2020)
  Role: (1) Put the burden on the fee applicant to provide evidence beyond self-affidavit; (2) reiterated that the rate must be sufficient to encourage competent representation. The panel used this to validate a $400/hour rate as adequate to attract counsel.
• Hubbell v. FedEx SmartPost, Inc., 933 F.3d 558, 575–76 (6th Cir. 2019)
  Role: Served as the main comparator for permissible reductions; the panel cited it to show that substantial reductions can be sustained when explained, and to support using inadequate segregation of billing as justification for a percentage reduction.
• Scott v. First S. Nat'l Bank, 936 F.3d 509, 522 (6th Cir. 2019)
  Role: Limited appellate review to issues/categories argued in the opening brief. This cabined the scope of the Sixth Circuit’s reexamination of deducted time.
• Binta B. ex rel. S.A. v. Gordon, 710 F.3d 608, 629–31 (6th Cir. 2013)
  Role: (1) Supported rejecting time spent on separate litigation as not reasonably chargeable to the opposing party; (2) reinforced that compensable time is time “reasonably expended” in the case at hand. The panel used it to affirm excluding state-court litigation against Miller and to reject the “incidental benefit” theory for allocating Miller-specific work to other defendants.
• Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 435 (1983)
  Role: Prohibited discounting success merely because a plaintiff did not prevail on every “alternative legal ground.” This undermined part of the district court’s rationale for the 10% reduction (even though the reduction was ultimately affirmed on a different rationale).
• Gentek Bldg. Prods., Inc. v. Sherwin-Williams Co., 491 F.3d 320, 333–34 (6th Cir. 2007)
  Role: Stated the usual rule: federal law for federal claims, state law for supplemental state claims. The panel invoked it to set up the question: which law governs prejudgment interest when the fee award arises from a settlement resolving both sets of claims?
• In re ClassicStar Mare Lease Litig., 727 F.3d 473, 497 (6th Cir. 2013)
  Role: Supported applying federal law where the judgment is based on a combination of federal and state claims. This was the opinion’s bridge to the rule it applied: federal law governed entitlement to prejudgment interest on the fee award in this mixed-claims settlement posture.
• Perdue v. Kenny A. ex rel. Winn, 559 U.S. 542, 556 (2010)
  Role: Recognized that delay/time value can be addressed through the rate structure (e.g., a current rate) rather than separately via interest/enhancement. The panel used this to uphold denial of prejudgment interest because the $400/hour rate—applied across years—already compensated for delay.
• EEOC v. Peoplemark, Inc., 732 F.3d 584, 594–95 (6th Cir. 2013)
  Role: Required documentation of expert fees and work performed; permitted denial where documentation is lacking. The panel applied it but softened the outcome because the expert’s substantial report was undisputed and relied upon, and the defense conceded a baseline amount.

Legal Reasoning

1) Reasonable hourly rate: rejecting top-percentile self-validation

The panel emphasized market reasonableness over counsel’s requested premium. Even with affidavits from Curhan and other Michigan employment lawyers, the court noted the requested rates were at the 95th percentile. Under Adcock-Ladd v. Sec'y of Treas. and Linneman v. Vita-Mix Corp., a district court is not required to award near-top-of-market rates; it must award a rate sufficient to attract competent counsel in the venue. The Sixth Circuit found $400/hour comfortably met that standard and was supported by market-average comparisons and the district court’s permissible sources under Ne. Ohio Coal. for the Homeless v. Husted.

2) Hours: separating “not chargeable to these defendants” from “unreasonably expended”

The panel drew a sharp line between work done in separate proceedings and work done in the federal case:

• Miller-related time: Under Binta B. ex rel. S.A. v. Gordon, time spent in separate state-court proceedings is not reasonably billed to the settling defendants, even if it incidentally strengthens the overall factual narrative. The Sixth Circuit therefore affirmed the exclusion of 500.2 hours tied primarily to Miller.
• “Premature trial preparation”: The district court’s categorical rule—trial work months before a scheduled trial is not compensable—was rejected as too rigid on this record. Here, trial was near when the case settled. With no showing that the 93.8 hours were otherwise unreasonable, the Sixth Circuit found a clear error of judgment in excluding them.

3) Across-the-board reduction: permissible, but the calculation must be transparent

The Sixth Circuit accepted that the district court could impose a 50% across-the-board reduction because it articulated concrete problems (padding, time spent getting up to speed, motions on issues that never arose, unreasonable time responding to motions). The key error was not the choice of a steep cut; it was the unexplained extra deduction of 249.2 hours before halving.

This portion operationalizes Rembert v. A Plus Home Health Care Agency LLC: discretionary reductions are upheld when explained, and reversed when the court’s reasoning and arithmetic diverge without justification. The appellate court corrected the calculation consistent with the district court’s stated “50% reduction” rationale.

4) Post-lodestar 10% reduction: rationale narrowed to billing segregation

The district court offered multiple reasons for reducing the lodestar by 10%. The Sixth Circuit rejected two of them:

• It was improper to treat loss on some “alternative legal grounds” as diminished success, under Hensley v. Eckerhart.
• It was misleading to compare the result to an earlier settlement offer that did not include fees and costs.

But the panel upheld the 10% reduction because the billing made it “difficult, if not impossible” to allocate hours by claim or defendant—a recognized basis under Hubbell v. FedEx SmartPost, Inc.. In effect, the Sixth Circuit narrowed the permissible justification to one supported by the record.

5) Prejudgment interest on fees: federal law governs in this mixed-claims settlement posture

The panel began with the default choice-of-law rule for interest in mixed federal/supplemental cases (Gentek Bldg. Prods., Inc. v. Sherwin-Williams Co.). It then treated this settlement-based fee award as “based on a combination of federal and state claims,” and therefore applied federal law under In re ClassicStar Mare Lease Litig..

On the merits, the court upheld denial of prejudgment interest because delay was effectively compensated through the $400/hour rate applied across the full span of the case—invoking Perdue v. Kenny A. ex rel. Winn to support addressing time value through the rate rather than a separate interest add-on. The contingency-fee posture did not compel interest where the rate itself already built in compensation for delay.

6) Expert costs: documentation required, but courts must still grapple with undisputed value and concessions

Under EEOC v. Peoplemark, Inc., inadequate documentation can justify denying expert fees. But here, the expert produced a 52-page Rule 26 report that the district court itself cited when denying summary judgment, and defendants conceded at least $11,848.75 was owed. The Sixth Circuit therefore ordered a limited increase to reflect demonstrated utility despite sparse billing detail—an approach that balances strict documentation requirements with record realities.

Impact

• Fee litigation after settlement: The decision encourages parties and courts to treat fee awards as an evidence-driven, math-transparent exercise. Large reductions remain possible, but unexplained “hidden” deductions risk reversal.
• Billing practices: Plaintiff-side counsel in multi-defendant or partially settled cases are put on notice that failure to segregate work by claim/defendant can support post-lodestar cuts—even when the plaintiff secures a meaningful settlement.
• Prejudgment interest strategy: In mixed federal–state settlements where the court determines fees, litigants should expect the Sixth Circuit to analyze prejudgment interest on fees through federal-law principles, and to scrutinize whether delay is already compensated through the selected rate (especially where a current or above-market rate is used).
• Expert cost recoverability: Parties should expect strict documentation demands, but also that a district court may need to recognize a provable minimum (particularly when the opponent concedes an amount and the expert work materially shaped the case’s posture).

Complex Concepts Simplified

• Lodestar method: The standard way to calculate attorney’s fees: reasonable hourly rate × reasonable hours. Courts may adjust in limited circumstances, but they must explain why.
• Across-the-board reduction: Instead of evaluating every time entry, a court cuts a percentage of hours globally (e.g., 50%) when billing is broadly excessive. This is allowed, but the court must explain the basis and apply the math correctly.
• Prejudgment interest: Money added to compensate for delay between when fees/costs were incurred and when they are paid. A court may deny it if the hourly rate already compensates for the time value of money.
• Supplemental jurisdiction (practical relevance here): Federal courts can hear related state-law claims alongside federal claims. When remedies (like interest) are disputed, courts must decide whether federal or state rules control.
• Rule 26 expert report: A detailed written disclosure in federal litigation explaining the expert’s opinions and bases. Producing a substantial report can support awarding at least some expert costs—even if invoicing detail is imperfect.

Conclusion

Pianko is a fee-and-cost decision with concrete procedural guidance: district courts retain wide discretion over rates and hours, but they must provide explanations that align with their calculations. It also clarifies (in this settlement posture) that federal law governs prejudgment interest on attorney’s fees when the judgment is rooted in a combination of federal and state claims, and it underscores that delay can be compensated through the chosen hourly rate rather than interest. Finally, it reinforces strict documentation expectations for expert costs while recognizing that undisputed, relied-upon expert work may justify a limited, supportable award.