Law360 (June 11, 2020, 8:36 PM EDT) — A California appeals court on Wednesday chewed out a Los Angeles lawyer who submitted “unsettling” and contradictory billing records to justify a $308,000 fee demand from a month-long engagement by the family of a man fatally shot by sheriff’s deputies.

In an opinion replete with doubt about invoices created by Michael S. Traylor, the panel backed a trial court’s decision to grant him a five-figure award, calling the decision to give him “something rather than nothing” a “discretionary act of grace.”

“The trial court in this case was entitled to discount Traylor’s belated and contradictory claims about his time on the…