Davidson County Public Guardian's bills exceed $1.8 million
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Jeanan Mills Stuart says her billing system is widely used in law offices and her double-billing instances were errors. / George Walker IV / File / The Tennessean
Judge David Randy Kennedy is responsible for approving public guardian billing requests. / George Walker IV / File / The Tennessean
Davidson County Public Guardian Jeanan Mills Stuart submitted two fee requests for the same services related to a real estate contract.
A client was billed twice for a trip to Target. Both bills were for one hour at $200.
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The Davidson County public guardian, whose fees are under review by a local probate judge, has double-billed clients, billed more than 24 hours in a day and earned more than $270,000 in thousands of small, individual charges for tasks such as listening to a voice mail.
The Tennessean first raised questions about Jeanan Mills Stuart’s fees when it found she was charging her legal rates of $200 to $225 per hour for nonlegal tasks, such as taking her wards on shopping trips and sorting their clothes before a move into an assisted-living center.
A new data analysis by The Tennessean of all of her billings between 2008 — when she was first appointed by the Metro Council — and February 2013 shows she has turned in fee requests with mistakes, such as double-billings, and more than 24-hour days, all of which have been approved by the judge overseeing the conservator cases.
In all, Stuart has billed for more than $1.8 million in fees since January 2008, when she took on her role, according to The Tennessean’s data analysis. As public guardian, she handles the affairs of people who are found by the Davidson County probate court to be mentally or physically unable to make their own decisions. Her wards have no control or say in what she does for them. The primary oversight of her fees is Davidson County Probate Judge David Randy Kennedy, who can approve or reject them.
Lawyers and experts in legal fees say that some of Stuart’s billing practices depart from typical standards — particularly her practice of charging attorneys’ fees for nonlegal services and repeatedly billing a minimum charge no matter what service is provided.
“These things seem particularly out of bounds,” said attorney Robert Fleischer, an expert on guardianships with the Massachusetts-based Center for Public Representation.
The Tennessean analysis of her bills show Stuart has:
• Billed twice for the same services nearly a dozen times.
• Billed for more than 24 hours in a single day twice.
• Billed a tenth of an hour thousands of times for individual tasks such as retrieving an email, reviewing a bill or listening to a voice mail.
These tasks cost wards tens of thousands of dollars because Stuart — unlike many lawyers who use paralegals or clerks at a lower cost for such work — charged her full legal rate of $200 to $225 per hour.
In a series of responses to Tennessean questions, Stuart defended her billing practices, saying her system was widely used in law offices. She said the cases of double-billing occurred because she turned into the court a “preview fee affidavit” instead of a “final affidavit,” which caused the errors.
She explained that her billing for more than 24 hours in a single day was actually for work that occurred over two days. And she has said in the past that she has the right as a lawyer to bill at her legal rates for work that she personally handles.
Judge Kennedy, who is in the process of reviewing Stuart’s fee requests, issued a preliminary report to the Metro Council last month stating that he had found no discrepancies after going through about 30 of Stuart’s currently active cases. He also announced he would not assign any additional cases to Stuart until the review was complete.
His review was prompted by concerns of Metro Council members after The Tennessean published a report on Stuart’s fees, including information that showed she charged one ward more than $1,200 for taking her on a 61/2-hour shopping trip to Dillard’s and Walgreens.
She actually billed the ward twice for that a trip for a total cost of about $2,400. After The Tennessean reported the double-billing in February, Stuart said it was a mistake and said she credited the client’s account by $1,462.50, which she said was the amount actually charged twice.
Kennedy said he has instituted new procedures to allow for closer review of all lawyers’ fees. He will no longer approve fee requests on the same day they are submitted.
Though Kennedy limited his review to Stuart’s currently active cases, The Tennessean analysis covers closed and open cases. The review shows that on multiple occasions Stuart has billed her wards twice for performing the same service and all were approved by Kennedy. One client was double-billed three times.
In the case of George Vickers, for example, Stuart billed one hour at a cost of $200 for a shopping trip to Target to buy him Depend undergarments. The same one-hour trip on the same day was listed on her next billing two months later.
In the same case and in the same two fee filings, Stuart billed two times for a 21/2-hour trip on the same dayto Burns, where Vickers’ property was being auctioned. As with the Target trips, the Burns trip payments were approved. Stuart also billed Vickers twice to review a Medicare statement.
In the case of Wanda Fite, Stuart billed her to draft a motion for the sale of her property. In the next fee filing, she billed the same amount for the same task on the same day. Fite was also billed twice the same day for “meeting with (real estate agent) and sign contract.”
For yet another ward, Stuart billed for 22 hours in a single day in two 11-hour entries, totaling $2,400 altogether. The charges listed were identical — cleaning out the ward’s former residence — and they were approved by Kennedy. Stuart said she had previously discovered the double-entry and later reimbursed the ward’s account.
Stuart said that while she may have submitted a fee affidavit — a sworn statement to the court listing fees — that listed individual tasks twice, she never collected double payments because her billing system prevented it and would have automatically generated a credit.
In her bills since 2008, she charged for 6 minutes 13,290 times, totaling more than $270,000 in fees. The charges account for about 15 percent of her total billings. Though some of the tenth of an hour entries list more than one task, most list only one.
Though Stuart said the tenth of an hour minimum charge was a common practice, experts contacted by the Tennessean disagreed.
Connie Draxler, deputy director of the Los Angeles County Public Guardian’s office, said they don’t have any minimum time charge.
“We bill for the exact amount of time spent on the case, whatever that is,” Draxler said.
James King, a California attorney who has testified as an expert witness in fee disputes, said there have been cases in which courts have challenged and reduced multiple billings for a minimum amount.
“The charge should not be for six minutes unless the task you performed actually took at least that amount of time,” King said.
He said the normal accepted practice would be for an attorney to group several tasks, such as returning several phone calls into a single six-minute block. He said there also are billing programs available under which an attorney can charge for as little as a minute at a time.
The same opinion was voiced by Fleischner, the author of several articles on guardianships, who said that while a tenth of an hour is often the minimum charge, the usual practice would be to group several tasks under each minimum charge.
“It doesn’t take six minutes to read an email or listen to a voice mail,” he said. “Lawyers are expected to observe reasonable billing judgment.”
Jerome Studer, a Chicago attorney who specializes in legal fee issues, said that if an attorney made a single phone call in a day for a client, charging the client for a tenth of an hour would be acceptable, but he said that multiple charges of a tenth of an hour in the same day would not be appropriate.
“You want to charge for the time you actually work,” he said.
The Tennessean analysis showed there were 1,989 instances where Stuart charged a tenth of an hour more than once for the same client on the same day. In the case of Dorothy Hawkins, Stuart billed 10 separate tenth of an hour charges on March 22, 2010.
King and Fleischner also were critical of Stuart’s practice of charging her full lawyer’s hourly rate for nonlegal tasks.
King said that while occasionally it may be simpler for a lawyer to just perform a small task rather than enlisting the aid of a secretary or paralegal, generally, a lawyer should not bill a full legal fee for tasks that could be performed by a paralegal or clerk.
“If someone does that (charging the full hourly rate) routinely, then that’s a problem,” King said.
Studer, the Chicago attorney, said that it was “not at all appropriate” for an attorney to charge full hourly legal rates for what are clerical type services.
“I can’t think of why a lawyer would have to go on a shopping trip,” Studer said.
“I have long days at my office,” Stuart said. “It is not unusual for me to spend that kind of time when there are exigent circumstances, especially at the start of an emergency conservatorship.”
Stuart’s billings for Jan, 27, 2012, include a 28-hour entry for work related to a single ward at a Cool Springs nursing home. The entry reports that she met with a hospice worker to discuss the ward’s case, had a telephone call with the ward’s physician and waited at the nursing home for relatives of the ward to arrive.
For the same day, Stuart also billed a total of two hours of work for more than a dozen other wards.
Stuart, in a written response to questions, said that the 30 hours were actually spread over two days and that she was primarily attending to two wards, a father and his daughter, who died the next day.
“Yes, it was a long time, and I did what I did to support people who needed my help,” Stuart wrote.
Stuart also billed in excess of 24 hours in a single day on March 24, 2009, with the largest chunk, 12 hours, coming in the case of a child who suffered severe injuries at birth. But on the same day she also said she went through paperwork for another ward at his former home in a trailer park. In all, she billed for 251/2 hours on that day.
Stuart said the March 24 billing involved an emergency situation involving a child who had to be removed from the parents’ home. She said the hours were actually spread over two days.
The Tennessean first raised questions about Jeanan Mills Stuart’s fees when it found she was charging her legal rates of $200 to $225 per hour for nonlegal tasks, such as taking her wards on shopping trips and sorting their clothes before a move into an assisted-living center.
A new data analysis by The Tennessean of all of her billings between 2008 — when she was first appointed by the Metro Council — and February 2013 shows she has turned in fee requests with mistakes, such as double-billings, and more than 24-hour days, all of which have been approved by the judge overseeing the conservator cases.
In all, Stuart has billed for more than $1.8 million in fees since January 2008, when she took on her role, according to The Tennessean’s data analysis. As public guardian, she handles the affairs of people who are found by the Davidson County probate court to be mentally or physically unable to make their own decisions. Her wards have no control or say in what she does for them. The primary oversight of her fees is Davidson County Probate Judge David Randy Kennedy, who can approve or reject them.
Lawyers and experts in legal fees say that some of Stuart’s billing practices depart from typical standards — particularly her practice of charging attorneys’ fees for nonlegal services and repeatedly billing a minimum charge no matter what service is provided.
“These things seem particularly out of bounds,” said attorney Robert Fleischer, an expert on guardianships with the Massachusetts-based Center for Public Representation.
The Tennessean analysis of her bills show Stuart has:
• Billed twice for the same services nearly a dozen times.
• Billed for more than 24 hours in a single day twice.
• Billed a tenth of an hour thousands of times for individual tasks such as retrieving an email, reviewing a bill or listening to a voice mail.
These tasks cost wards tens of thousands of dollars because Stuart — unlike many lawyers who use paralegals or clerks at a lower cost for such work — charged her full legal rate of $200 to $225 per hour.
In a series of responses to Tennessean questions, Stuart defended her billing practices, saying her system was widely used in law offices. She said the cases of double-billing occurred because she turned into the court a “preview fee affidavit” instead of a “final affidavit,” which caused the errors.
She explained that her billing for more than 24 hours in a single day was actually for work that occurred over two days. And she has said in the past that she has the right as a lawyer to bill at her legal rates for work that she personally handles.
Judge Kennedy, who is in the process of reviewing Stuart’s fee requests, issued a preliminary report to the Metro Council last month stating that he had found no discrepancies after going through about 30 of Stuart’s currently active cases. He also announced he would not assign any additional cases to Stuart until the review was complete.
His review was prompted by concerns of Metro Council members after The Tennessean published a report on Stuart’s fees, including information that showed she charged one ward more than $1,200 for taking her on a 61/2-hour shopping trip to Dillard’s and Walgreens.
She actually billed the ward twice for that a trip for a total cost of about $2,400. After The Tennessean reported the double-billing in February, Stuart said it was a mistake and said she credited the client’s account by $1,462.50, which she said was the amount actually charged twice.
Kennedy said he has instituted new procedures to allow for closer review of all lawyers’ fees. He will no longer approve fee requests on the same day they are submitted.
Though Kennedy limited his review to Stuart’s currently active cases, The Tennessean analysis covers closed and open cases. The review shows that on multiple occasions Stuart has billed her wards twice for performing the same service and all were approved by Kennedy. One client was double-billed three times.
In the case of George Vickers, for example, Stuart billed one hour at a cost of $200 for a shopping trip to Target to buy him Depend undergarments. The same one-hour trip on the same day was listed on her next billing two months later.
In the same case and in the same two fee filings, Stuart billed two times for a 21/2-hour trip on the same dayto Burns, where Vickers’ property was being auctioned. As with the Target trips, the Burns trip payments were approved. Stuart also billed Vickers twice to review a Medicare statement.
In the case of Wanda Fite, Stuart billed her to draft a motion for the sale of her property. In the next fee filing, she billed the same amount for the same task on the same day. Fite was also billed twice the same day for “meeting with (real estate agent) and sign contract.”
For yet another ward, Stuart billed for 22 hours in a single day in two 11-hour entries, totaling $2,400 altogether. The charges listed were identical — cleaning out the ward’s former residence — and they were approved by Kennedy. Stuart said she had previously discovered the double-entry and later reimbursed the ward’s account.
Stuart said that while she may have submitted a fee affidavit — a sworn statement to the court listing fees — that listed individual tasks twice, she never collected double payments because her billing system prevented it and would have automatically generated a credit.
6-minute fees add up
The new analysis also shows that a large chunk of Stuart’s fees come from billings of one-tenth of an hour at her legal hourly rate of $200 to $225 per hour. Some of the most frequent tasks for which she bills at one-tenth of an hour, or 6 minutes, is reviewing bank statements and listening to or responding to voice mails.In her bills since 2008, she charged for 6 minutes 13,290 times, totaling more than $270,000 in fees. The charges account for about 15 percent of her total billings. Though some of the tenth of an hour entries list more than one task, most list only one.
Though Stuart said the tenth of an hour minimum charge was a common practice, experts contacted by the Tennessean disagreed.
Connie Draxler, deputy director of the Los Angeles County Public Guardian’s office, said they don’t have any minimum time charge.
“We bill for the exact amount of time spent on the case, whatever that is,” Draxler said.
James King, a California attorney who has testified as an expert witness in fee disputes, said there have been cases in which courts have challenged and reduced multiple billings for a minimum amount.
“The charge should not be for six minutes unless the task you performed actually took at least that amount of time,” King said.
He said the normal accepted practice would be for an attorney to group several tasks, such as returning several phone calls into a single six-minute block. He said there also are billing programs available under which an attorney can charge for as little as a minute at a time.
The same opinion was voiced by Fleischner, the author of several articles on guardianships, who said that while a tenth of an hour is often the minimum charge, the usual practice would be to group several tasks under each minimum charge.
“It doesn’t take six minutes to read an email or listen to a voice mail,” he said. “Lawyers are expected to observe reasonable billing judgment.”
Jerome Studer, a Chicago attorney who specializes in legal fee issues, said that if an attorney made a single phone call in a day for a client, charging the client for a tenth of an hour would be acceptable, but he said that multiple charges of a tenth of an hour in the same day would not be appropriate.
“You want to charge for the time you actually work,” he said.
The Tennessean analysis showed there were 1,989 instances where Stuart charged a tenth of an hour more than once for the same client on the same day. In the case of Dorothy Hawkins, Stuart billed 10 separate tenth of an hour charges on March 22, 2010.
King and Fleischner also were critical of Stuart’s practice of charging her full lawyer’s hourly rate for nonlegal tasks.
King said that while occasionally it may be simpler for a lawyer to just perform a small task rather than enlisting the aid of a secretary or paralegal, generally, a lawyer should not bill a full legal fee for tasks that could be performed by a paralegal or clerk.
“If someone does that (charging the full hourly rate) routinely, then that’s a problem,” King said.
Studer, the Chicago attorney, said that it was “not at all appropriate” for an attorney to charge full hourly legal rates for what are clerical type services.
“I can’t think of why a lawyer would have to go on a shopping trip,” Studer said.
'Long days' cited
In at least two cases, Stuart billed for more than 24 hours in a single day.“I have long days at my office,” Stuart said. “It is not unusual for me to spend that kind of time when there are exigent circumstances, especially at the start of an emergency conservatorship.”
Stuart’s billings for Jan, 27, 2012, include a 28-hour entry for work related to a single ward at a Cool Springs nursing home. The entry reports that she met with a hospice worker to discuss the ward’s case, had a telephone call with the ward’s physician and waited at the nursing home for relatives of the ward to arrive.
For the same day, Stuart also billed a total of two hours of work for more than a dozen other wards.
Stuart, in a written response to questions, said that the 30 hours were actually spread over two days and that she was primarily attending to two wards, a father and his daughter, who died the next day.
“Yes, it was a long time, and I did what I did to support people who needed my help,” Stuart wrote.
Stuart also billed in excess of 24 hours in a single day on March 24, 2009, with the largest chunk, 12 hours, coming in the case of a child who suffered severe injuries at birth. But on the same day she also said she went through paperwork for another ward at his former home in a trailer park. In all, she billed for 251/2 hours on that day.
Stuart said the March 24 billing involved an emergency situation involving a child who had to be removed from the parents’ home. She said the hours were actually spread over two days.
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