Attorney fee litigation takes up the larger part of all litigation involving attorneys as parties, and it almost always revolves around hourly billing.  There are few cases involving contingent fee cases.  Hourly rate billing principles include “account stated” which posits that regularly tendered invoices for services rendered to the client where the client either signed off on the invoices or failed to timely object to them constitutes “acceptance” of the invoices, and precludes an argument that they are in any fashion incorrect.

Wand, Powers & Goody, LLP v Yuliano  2016 NY Slip Op 07946  Decided on November 23, 2016  Appellate Division, Second Department shows us one defense to the “account stated” principle.  “The Supreme Court should have denied that branch of the plaintiff’s motion which was for summary judgment on the complaint. The plaintiff demonstrated its prima facie entitlement to judgment as a matter of law on the complaint by establishing that it regularly tendered invoices for services rendered to the defendant and that the defendant either signed off on the invoices or failed to timely object to them (see Landa v Blocker, 87 AD3d 719, 721). Nonetheless, in opposition, the defendant submitted an affidavit in which she asserted that she only signed the invoices because she was told that, if she did not sign, no work would be done on her case. This assertion was sufficient to raise a triable issue of fact as to whether the defendant acquiesced in the correctness of the invoices (see id. at 721).”