Ronald Dantowitz was hired as an astronomy teacher and director of an observatory at Dexter Southfield Academy, a private school in Brookline, Massachusetts. As the observatory director, Dantowitz was responsible for keeping the School’s telescope in working order.
Dantowitz’s son was born in 2010 and has been severely autistic since birth. In 2014, Dantowitz himself was diagnosed with a mild condition of autism spectrum disorder. Dantowitz disclosed his diagnosis to his supervisor and other administrators at the School.
In August 2018, Dantowitz requested a leave of absence to care for his son. The School’s administrators directed Dantowitz to the School’s leave policy, rather than leave under the FMLA. Dantowitz conferred with his attorneys, who helped arrange for Dantowitz to take leave under the FMLA.
In December 2018, Dantowitz returned to School. During the following two months, Dantowitz’s performance was closely evaluated and he received poor performance reviews. One criticism was that Dantowitz had only notified the School in June 2018, shortly before requesting leave, that the telescope required serious repairs. In January 2019, Dantowitz was terminated.
Dantowitz filed suit against the School claiming five claims of disability discrimination under Massachusetts law and two claims under the FMLA. The School offered to settle the case for $300,000, which Dantowitz rejected. At the time, Dantowitz had already incurred approximately $150,000 in attorneys’ fees.
The case went to trial and the jury ruled in favor of the School on the Massachusetts disability discrimination claims and in favor of Dantowitz on the FMLA claims. The jury awarded Dantowitz $15,000 in damages, specifically for back pay. The jury awarded Dantowitz zero dollars for front pay, emotional distress, and compensatory losses.
Dantowitz asked the Court to alter the judgment amount, seeking liquidated damages and $1.5 million in front pay. The Court awarded $15,000 in liquidated damages based upon the Court’s finding that the School failed to prove that they acted in good faith and had reasonable grounds to believe its actions were not a violation of the FMLA.
Dantowitz filed a petition seeking over $352,000 in attorneys’ fees and over $20,000 in costs.
The Court granted Dantowitz’s petition for attorneys’ fees for his successful FMLA claims. The FMLA allows reasonable attorneys’ fees to be awarded in addition to any judgment. The Court determined a reasonable amount of attorneys’ fees based on the number of hours reasonably spent on the litigation, multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate.
The Court then reduced the amount of fees based on the relative amount of time the attorneys spent on the disability discrimination claims rather than the FMLA claims. Since the disability discrimination claims were not successful, Dantowitz could not recover attorneys’ fees for that time.
The Court also considered the amount of the settlement offer that Dantowitz rejected to gauge the benchmark results obtained at trial. In this case, the results at trial were significantly lower than the settlement offer Dantowitz rejected.
The Court ultimately awarded Dantowitz $162,450.91 in attorneys’ fees. This amounted to 40% of the amount Dantowitz requested, which the Court described as extremely generous. The Court considered that two out of seven of Dantowitz’s claims were successful, that the FMLA claims took less than one third of the time and effort as the disability claims, that Dantowitz recovered only 1 percent of the requested jury award and 14 percent of the settlement amount he rejected, and that Dantowitz failed to receive any compensation for his front pay bids.
Dantowitz v. Dexter Southfield, Inc., Mot. for Attorney Fees (D. Mass. Nov. 2, 2023), 1:20-CV-10540.
Note: This case serves as a reminder that employees may recover attorneys’ fees for successful FMLA related claims, and illustrates that, even when schools are largely successful on their claims, attorneys’ fees can still create a significant cost. Here, the employee was only granted $15,000 in damages, and yet, the school had to pay over $150,000 in attorneys’ fees.