Northern District of California District Court Denies Rule 59(e) Relief and Cuts ERISA Fee Award for Non-Specialist Counsel

In Woo v. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., No. 23-cv-05063-RFL, 2026 WL 2445072 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 19, 2026), United States District Judge Rita F. Lin denied Plaintiff’s motion to alter the judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e) and granted, in substantially reduced amount, Plaintiff’s motion for attorneys’ fees and costs under ERISA’s fee-shifting provision, 29 U.S.C. § 1132(g)(1). The court awarded Plaintiff $201,195.00 in attorneys’ fees and $467.00 in costs, well short of the roughly $350,000 in fees her counsel ultimately requested. The decision offers a detailed look at two recurring questions in ERISA litigation: the narrow grounds for altering a judgment after entry, and the evidence a prevailing party must produce to recover fees at ERISA-specialist rates.

What had Plaintiff already won before this order?

Plaintiff prevailed on an earlier Rule 52 motion and obtained a judgment awarding monetary relief on an equitable estoppel theory, tied to Defendants’ initial erroneous determination that she was eligible to participate in the Kaiser pension plan. This order does not revisit that merits ruling. The disputes the court resolved here were downstream: whether the lump-sum judgment should be altered to provide different or ongoing relief, and how much of Plaintiff’s counsel’s fees were reasonably recoverable.

Why did the court deny the Rule 59(e) motion?

The court held that Plaintiff used Rule 59(e) to relitigate matters the court had already decided or to raise arguments she could have presented before judgment. Rule 59(e) permits alteration only where a party presents newly discovered evidence, shows clear error or manifest injustice, or identifies an intervening change in controlling law, and the rule “may not be used to relitigate old matters, or to raise arguments or present evidence that could have been raised prior to the entry of judgment.” See Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, 554 U.S. 471, 485 n.5 (2008). Plaintiff’s contentions that the Rule 52 order had found her an actual plan participant, or had mandated ongoing participation, had already been considered and rejected when the court adopted Defendants’ proposed judgment. Her new arguments invoking ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code, and the I.R.S.’s Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System, along with a supporting actuarial analysis, could have been raised before judgment, so the court declined to consider them.

The court also clarified the limits of the underlying relief. The Rule 52 order concluded only that the Plan’s language did not unambiguously foreclose Plaintiff’s participation, not that the Plan guaranteed her ongoing participation. Because Defendants corrected their eligibility representation on December 22, 2020, Plaintiff could not obtain estoppel-based relief past that date. See Spink v. Lockheed Corp., 125 F.3d 1257, 1263 (9th Cir. 1997). The court further explained that equitable estoppel under section 1132(a)(3) does not supply a surcharge remedy, because the court had made no finding of breach of fiduciary duty or unjust enrichment. See Gabriel v. Alaska Elec. Pension Fund, 773 F.3d 945, 957 (9th Cir. 2014).

How did the court set the reasonable hourly rates?

Plaintiff sought an $800 hourly rate for her primary counsel, Jay Suen, supported by a declaration from an experienced California ERISA litigator opining that the rate fell within the prevailing market for ERISA work in the Northern District of California. The court found this evidence insufficient because Suen is not an ERISA practitioner. His own declaration described a practice focused on trusts, estates, and taxation, and acknowledged that this case was the most extensively litigated federal matter of his career. The court reasoned that evidence establishing a reasonable rate for an experienced ERISA specialist does not establish a reasonable rate for an equally skilled attorney whose experience and reputation lie outside ERISA litigation. See Dowdy v. Metro. Life Ins. Co., No. 15-cv-03764-JST, 2019 WL 120730, at *5 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 7, 2019).

Rather than adopt the requested rate, the court set Suen’s rate at $575 per hour, the rate he actually charged for most of the work in the case, treating that figure as the most reliable evidence of his market rate. The court reduced the rates of the three other lawyer timekeepers by $100 per hour each to reflect their lack of ERISA experience, reducing two associates from $650 to $550 and a third attorney from $450 to $350. See Villalobos v. Downey Grinding Co., No. SACV 19-00150 JVS, 2022 WL 2965669, at *5 (C.D. Cal. Feb. 3, 2022).

Which hours and expenses did the court disallow?

The court excluded the hours Plaintiff’s counsel spent preparing an amended complaint that was never filed, reasoning that this work was not expended in pursuit of the result achieved. See Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 435 (1983). The court applied a 40% reduction to the hours devoted to the form-of-judgment proceedings, explaining that degree of success is the most critical factor in a fee award and that Plaintiff achieved only limited success there, securing monetary relief while the court adopted Defendants’ proposed judgment over her own. The court declined to reduce the block-billed entries, finding that they reflected a reasonable number of hours for identifiable, compensable tasks. The court denied fees for the work on the Rule 59(e) motion, reasoning that a denied motion resting on previously rejected or previously available arguments was not reasonably spent in pursuit of the litigation. The court also denied fees for purely clerical tasks, including time spent preparing time records and creating exhibits, and denied the consulting and actuarial valuation expenses Plaintiff incurred in connection with the Rule 59(e) motion.

Disposition

The court denied Plaintiff’s Rule 59(e) motion and granted her motion for attorneys’ fees and costs in part, awarding $201,195.00 in attorneys’ fees and $467.00 in costs.