Pfail v. County of Nassau et al

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
BRIAN PFAIL,
Plaintiffs,
v.
COUNTY OF NASSAU, NASSAU COUNTY
POLICE DEPARTMENT, POLICE OFFICER
JOSEPH MASSARO, in his individual and
official capacity, POLICE OFFICER
JONATHAN PANUTHOS, in his individual and
official capacity, POLICE OFFICER KARN C.
O’BRIEN, in her individual and official capacity,
SERGEANT THOMAS IANNUCCI, in his
individual and official capacity, and JOHN DOES
1-10, in their individual and official capacities,
Defendants.
MEMORANDUM & ORDER
16-CV-518 (NRM)
NINA R. MORRISON, United States District Judge:
A jury awarded Plaintiff Brian Pfail $1,860,000 in compensatory damages
and $293,580 in punitive damages against four police officers of the Nassau County
Police Department (“NCPD”). On November 13, 2025, this Court denied
Defendants’ post-trial motions to set aside the verdict or reduce the jury’s damages
award. ECF No. 173. Plaintiff’s counsel now moves for attorney’s fees as the
prevailing party in the litigation under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. For the reasons that
follow, the Court grants Plaintiff’s motion in full and awards attorney’s fees as
requested in Plaintiff’s most recent supporting declarations. See Reply Dec. of
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Korenbaum at 3; Reply Dec. of Brewington at 6.1
DISCUSSION
Defendants primarily argue that a number of counsel’s time entries in their
billing submissions are duplicative and are therefore illegitimate. Opp. at 11–13.
However, any purported duplication pointed out by Defendants can be explained by
the fact that certain tasks may take — or indeed, require — multiple occasions to
complete. See Pascuiti v. New York Yankees, 108 F. Supp. 2d 258, 271 n.5 (S.D.N.Y.
2000) (“The Yankees include in this category allegedly duplicative entries . . . . But
the examples cited by the Yankees are tasks that simply might have taken two
occasions to complete, such as reviewing photos or preparing a file memo.”); Etna
Prods. Co. Inc. v. Q Mktg. Grp., Ltd., No. 03-CV-3805 (SAS), 2005 WL 2254465, at
*4 (S.D.N.Y. June 6, 2005) (“There also is no basis for the Defendants’ contention
that Etna should be denied fees in instances where an attorney performed the same
task over the course of several days.”). In addition, while some of the descriptions
for these entries may be vague, “when viewed in the context of other work
performed around the same time, the ambiguity of many of the challenged entries
disappears.” Rozell v. Ross-Holst, 576 F. Supp. 2d 527, 540 (S.D.N.Y. 2008).
Defendants also claim that Plaintiff cannot recover fees for work associated
with media relations. Opp. at 14–15. Courts indeed “generally require that [media
relations] work be ‘directly and intimately related to the successful representation
1 All references to page numbers use the pagination provided by the
Electronic Case Filing system.
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of [the] client’” to be compensable as attorney’s fees. Small v. New York City
Transit Auth., 2014 WL 1236619, at *8 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 25, 2014) (second alteration
in original) (quoting Davis v. City and Cnty. of San Francisco, 976 F.2d 1536, 1545
(9th Cir. 1992)). “However, there is precedent for awarding fees for media work, as
informing the public about court proceedings is often necessary to fully vindicate
the public interest implicated by the case.” Rodriguez ex rel. Kelly v. McLoughlin,
84 F. Supp. 2d 417, 425 n.7 (S.D.N.Y. 1999). For example, the court exercised its
discretion to award such fees in Rodriguez after a jury awarded the plaintiff
$50,002 against a foster care service who unlawfully removed a child from his foster
mother’s care. Id. at 419; see Rodriguez v. McLoughlin, 49 F. Supp. 2d 186, 189–92
(S.D.N.Y. 1999). Similar public interests are implicated here, where a jury found
that four officers of the NCPD engaged in numerous violations of state and federal
law, and Plaintiff alleged that he suffered serious physical and emotional injuries at
the hands of these officers that may persist for the rest of his life. Further,
Plaintiff’s counsel’s entries related to public relations pointed out by Defendants
represents only 5.2 hours of work, Opp. at 15, out of a total of 840 hours in
compensable attorney time spent on the litigation over nine years, Reply Ex. 3 at
87. The Court finds that “the comparatively few hours” spent on media relations
are reasonable and compensable. U.S. Football League v. Nat’l Football League,
704 F. Supp. 474, 482 (S.D.N.Y. 1989), aff’d, 887 F.2d 408 (2d Cir. 1989).
Defendants also raise objections to Plaintiff’s entries related to travel time
and time spent on the retention of one of Plaintiff’s experts, Opp. at 9, 11–12, but
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Plaintiff’s counsel has already agreed to reduce his requested fees in accordance
with those objections, Reply Dec. of Brewington at 5–6.
None of Defendants’ remaining challenges have merit. Accordingly, the
Court grants Plaintiff’s motion for attorney’s fees, as revised in their Reply, in full.
Plaintiff is awarded attorney’s fees and discretionary costs in the total amount of
$425,665.53 — $372,645.53 for the Law Offices of Frederick K. Brewington, and
$53,020 for Scott A. Korenbaum.2
SO ORDERED.
/s/ Nina R. Morrison
NINA R. MORRISON
United States District Judge
Dated: 	December 3, 2025
Brooklyn, New York
2 Plaintiff’s Reply states that the total compensation amount is $425,555.53,
rather than $425,665.53. Reply at 15. However, Plaintiff provides a breakdown of
the individual amounts that make up that total, and those amounts add up to
$425,665.53. Id.; see Reply Dec. of Brewington at 6; Reply Dec. of Korenbaum at 3.
The Court thus awards $425,665.53.
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