{"id":403,"date":"2026-01-05T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/california.shuster.info\/?p=403"},"modified":"2026-01-05T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T12:00:00","slug":"yolanda-v-bisignano-social-security-406b-attorney-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/california.shuster.info\/?p=403","title":{"rendered":"Yolanda V. v. Bisignano \u2014 S.D. Cal. Approves $37,920 Social Security Attorney Fee Award at $1,700-Per-Hour Effective Rate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
Case<\/dt>\n
Yolanda V. v. Bisignano<\/dd>\n
Court<\/dt>\n
U.S. District Court \u2014 Southern District of California<\/dd>\n
Date Decided<\/dt>\n
2026-01-05<\/dd>\n
Docket No.<\/dt>\n
3:19-cv-01856<\/dd>\n
Status<\/dt>\n
Unreported \/ Non-Citable<\/dd>\n
Topics<\/dt>\n
Social Security disability, 42 U.S.C. \u00a7 406(b) attorney fees, contingency fee agreement, Crawford reasonableness analysis, EAJA offset<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Background<\/h2>\n

This case began as a routine Social Security disability appeal. The Social Security Commissioner had denied the plaintiff’s application for disability insurance benefits. She filed a federal court action under the Social Security Act seeking judicial review. The federal court reversed the denial and remanded the case to the agency for further proceedings, and the parties jointly agreed to a $4,400 attorney fee award under the Equal Access to Justice Act (“EAJA”), the federal statute that provides for fees in successful agency-review cases.<\/p>\n

On remand, the agency found in favor of the claimant and awarded $247,681 in past-due benefits \u2014 eight years of disability payments. The Commissioner withheld $61,920.25 (25% of the past-due award) in case the plaintiff’s counsel filed a motion for fees under 42 U.S.C. \u00a7 406(b), which is the federal statute that allows the court to award attorney’s fees in successful Social Security cases out of the past-due benefits award. Counsel filed for $37,920.25, less the $4,400 EAJA fee already received.<\/p>\n

The Court’s Holding<\/h2>\n

The court approved the full requested fee. Section 406(b) caps fees at 25% of past-due benefits, and within that ceiling the court must determine whether the requested fee is “reasonable” under the Supreme Court’s Gisbrecht v. Barnhart<\/em> decision and the Ninth Circuit’s Crawford v. Astrue<\/em> en banc decision.<\/p>\n

The court started, as Crawford requires, with the contingent-fee agreement between the claimant and her counsel \u2014 here, the standard 25% contingency. The requested fee was 15.3% of the past-due award, well below the statutory cap. The court then considered Crawford’s reasonableness factors: the character of the representation, the results obtained, any substandard performance or delay, and proportionality between fees and time spent. None of those factors warranted a reduction.<\/p>\n

Counsel and a paralegal had spent 22.3 hours on the federal-court case, producing an effective hourly rate of $1,700.46. The court explained why such a rate was not a “windfall” given the significant risk inherent in contingency representation in Social Security cases \u2014 the risk of total nonpayment if the case is lost, plus typical multi-year delays. Counsel had over 25 years of Social Security experience, and the result was an eight-year past-due benefits award. The court cited several California decisions approving similar high effective rates (for example, $1,612 and $1,990 per hour) where the work produced large benefit awards.<\/p>\n

Per Gisbrecht’s offset rule, the court ordered counsel to refund the previous $4,400 EAJA payment to the claimant so that she would not effectively be charged twice.<\/p>\n

Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n