Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Lawyer’s claim for additional professional fees was assessed in the absence of a written fee agreement, requiring the court to apply a quantum meruit and “just and reasonable” standard.
• Reasonableness of hours billed was challenged, with particular scrutiny of time charged for reviewing existing proceedings and preparing an argument plan and jurisprudence book already largely assembled by prior counsel.
• Credibility issues arose when the lawyer’s testimony on who prepared key documents conflicted with the testimony of his own non-lawyer assistant, undermining the reliability of the billing entries.
• Charges for preparing a short letter and for large photocopying costs (notably a $2,000 photocopy bill) were found excessive, supporting a conclusion that the account was inflated.
• The lawyer’s unilateral increase in hourly rate, significant pre-hearing billing before even meeting the clients, and failure to complete the underlying mandate weighed heavily against recovery of further fees.
• Application of the Code of ethics of lawyers and the Loi sur le Barreau led the court to reduce the fee invoice to zero, allowing only reimbursement of modest bailiff’s costs.

Factual background

The case arises from a dispute between a lawyer, Robert Eidinger, practicing under the name Eidinger & Associés, and his former clients, the defendants, regarding payment of professional fees in the context of an ongoing civil matter. The defendants had originally retained another lawyer at the same firm, Me Paule Lafontaine, in March 2022. Her mandate was to prepare and present a motion for retraction of judgment against a decision rendered against the defendants. This was therefore not a fresh dispute, but a continuation of litigation where an adverse judgment already existed and the defendants were seeking to have it retracted.

No written fee agreement was concluded between the defendants and Lafontaine. However, she informed their representative, Mahmudul Hasan, that her hourly rate would be $200 and that the defendants should expect to pay approximately $5,000 plus taxes and disbursements for the entire file. The defendants ultimately paid $6,477.71 to Eidinger & Associés for Lafontaine’s services, which included a year of work, several affidavits, court attendances and preparation of the motion.

In March 2023, before the motion was finally heard, Lafontaine advised that she was leaving private practice. The plaintiff, Me Eidinger, then took over the file and agreed to represent the defendants at the scheduled hearing dates in May 2023. At this point, a substantial portion of the preparatory work had already been performed and billed by Lafontaine.

Fee arrangements and subsequent dispute

Prior to even meeting the clients, Eidinger wrote to the defendants, through Hasan, requesting an additional retainer of $5,748.75. He would later allege that he had already spent 42 hours on the file before having any direct meeting with them and that his hourly rate was $300. The evidence on whether the clients had been informed of this higher hourly rate was conflicting, and the court preferred Hasan’s version of events, finding it more credible.

On 4 May 2023, during a meeting, Hasan gave Eidinger a further cheque for $6,000. The hearing that had been scheduled for mid-May 2023 was then postponed to a later date. On 9 May 2023, Eidinger sent his invoice (exhibit P-1) in the amount of $12,640.05 to the defendants.

Hasan’s written response made it clear that the defendants were shocked by the amount claimed. He stressed that Lafontaine had worked on the file for about a year, produced several affidavits, attended court for three days and “did all the work,” for which they had already paid approximately $6,400. Hasan emphasized that, according to his understanding from Lafontaine, what remained to pay was essentially the court time for the last two days of hearing. He stated that he had discussed fees with Eidinger and believed the $6,000 he had just paid would cover the remaining hearing; he also understood that, if the judgment were successfully retracted, a further $6,000 would then be needed to complete the case.

Faced with the unexpectedly large invoice (which he believed brought the total close to $18,000), Hasan wrote that he felt the lawyer was not truly interested in representing them, that he could not recover the $6,000 he had just paid, and that he and his children were suffering financially because of the litigation. Shortly after this exchange, Eidinger ceased acting for the defendants and filed his small claims action on 7 August 2023 to recover the $12,640.05 claimed in his invoice. The defendants then had to retain a new lawyer to take over the underlying case.

Evidence on hours billed and work performed

In the absence of a written fee agreement, the burden fell on the lawyer to justify his fees, and the court had to evaluate the work on a quantum meruit basis – that is, based on the true value of services rendered. The court closely scrutinized invoice P-1 and questioned both the plaintiff and his witness, Patrice Nadeau, who is not a lawyer, about the time billed.

Several key components of the invoice raised concerns. First, the plaintiff billed 14 hours for “review of legal proceedings.” The court held that such a charge was neither fair nor reasonable. The defendants were not responsible for Lafontaine’s departure from the firm and were not to be burdened with the full cost of another lawyer at the same firm revisiting and re-reviewing work that had already been done and billed.

Second, the invoice included approximately 26 hours for preparing the argument plan and the book of jurisprudence – documents the court physically reviewed at the hearing. The court found that the jurisprudence binder largely consisted of many photocopied passages from multiple decisions, with very limited original argumentation. According to Hasan, the binder had actually been prepared by Lafontaine in 2022. Critically, the plaintiff did not call Lafontaine to testify, and therefore did not discharge his burden of proof that this work was newly and independently done by him.

Third, the court probed who had actually prepared the documentation. When asked whether he or someone else (such as a student, trainee or paralegal) had assembled the jurisprudence materials, the plaintiff initially claimed he had done the work himself. However, during Hasan’s testimony, Nadeau appeared in the courtroom and then testified that he had in fact helped the plaintiff with the work. This discrepancy undermined the plaintiff’s credibility in the court’s eyes and reinforced doubts about the accuracy of the time entries.

The court also examined a letter sent by the plaintiff to the Honourable Robert Castiglio on 5 May 2023 (exhibit P-3) for which the plaintiff billed one hour of time. The judge concluded that the letter could not reasonably have taken more than 15 minutes to draft, making the full hour charge excessive. Beyond time entries, the court noted an especially troubling disbursement: $2,000 billed for photocopies, which it described as abusive.

Court’s analysis of the lawyer’s fees

In analyzing the disputed invoice, the court applied article 126 of the Loi sur le Barreau and the relevant provisions of the Code of ethics of lawyers, particularly article 99, which obliges counsel to charge fees that are just, reasonable and proportionate to the work performed and results achieved. The court also referred to prior case law emphasizing that, when there is no written agreement, the lawyer must justify the fees, and that the court may reduce them to what is reasonable, taking into account the circumstances and the value of the services.

The court emphasized several factors. Many of the hours billed represented a re-review of work already done and billed by another lawyer at the same firm, a burden that should not fall entirely on the clients. A very large block of time was charged to tasks such as the argument plan and jurisprudence book, despite credible evidence that much of this had been prepared earlier by Lafontaine, and despite the fact that the binder itself appeared to consist largely of photocopied extracts rather than substantial original written argument. The plaintiff’s credibility was significantly weakened by the contradiction between his assertion that he personally prepared the documents and Nadeau’s testimony that he had assisted with the work.

Further, the bill was “replete with exaggerations,” including the one-hour charge for a short letter that should have taken a fraction of the time and the $2,000 photocopy charge, which the court explicitly branded as abusive. The judge also considered that the plaintiff had ceased acting and therefore had not completed a significant portion of the work nor obtained any tangible result for the defendants in the underlying retraction motion.

Consistent with established jurisprudence, the court reaffirmed that the mere total of minutes billed is only one consideration and may not reflect the true value of services rendered. Ultimately, balancing all these elements, and exercising the discretion granted under the Code of ethics, the court decided that the appropriate sanction in light of the excessive and unjustified billing was a substantial reduction of the professional fees claimed.

Outcome and implications

In its operative disposition, the court formally granted the action only in part. It reduced the plaintiff’s 9 May 2023 invoice to zero in respect of professional fees, recognizing none of the claimed amount as just and reasonable. The only sum allowed was the out-of-pocket bailiff’s fees incurred in the course of the underlying proceedings.

Accordingly, the defendants were ordered, jointly and severally, to pay the plaintiff $105.30, representing bailiff costs alone, without interest, without additional indemnity and without an award of legal costs. In practical terms, the defendants emerged as the successful party on the core issue of professional fees, as the court rejected the bulk of the lawyer’s claim and confined recovery to a minimal disbursement of $105.30 in the plaintiff’s favour.