Facebook Inc. and its lawyers at Cooley have lost their bid to recover attorney fees from Rembrandt Social Media, the nonpracticing entity they slayed at trial in June.
At a hearing on Friday, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria, Va., denied Facebook’s motion for $5.8 million in attorney fees and $860,000 in costs. The judge faulted Rembrandt for advancing a flawed damages theory. But the plaintiff’s conduct wasn’t all that unusual and didn’t warrant fee-shifting even under the defendant-friendly standard recently articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court, Ellis concluded.
