Bederka v. Syms

Order, Surrogate’s Court, New York County (Nora S. Anderson, S.), entered January 26, 2015, which granted the Special Referee’s motion to determine her fee for supervising preobjection discovery and to allocate such fee among the parties, unanimously affirmed, without costs.

The amount of the fee award was justified by the qualifications of the referee and the time she reasonably spent in resolving acrimonious disputes among counsel, including issues of some complexity. There is no merit to the contention that the fee award should be limited because the estate is small, as the purpose of the discovery was to establish that the estate had been diminished by transfers as a result of undue influence and is of greater value than stated by petitioner. The allocation of the fee was a proper exercise of discretion, commensurate with the Surrogate’s correct perception of the causes of the discovery delays.