good afternoon i am clay finlay representing cindy harder this is an appeal of an attorney for your ward into the individuals with disabilities education act and because a lot of people are familiar with how this act work is somewhat unique in that the there is a state hearing officer that makes the initial decision in the case and then that can be appealed to the united states district court and that's what happened in this case mrs harter prevailed in the state administrative perceiving the school district appealed mr carter also prevailed in the appeal to district court and then we moved for attorneys fees and  i'd like to begin we've got two issues the first is miss harder initially presented or her quest for a fee she presented only her quest for fees at work at the administrative level before the state hearing officer and the district court cutter fee for that work in half after that miss harder move her attorneys fees for her work defending the hearing officer decision on appeal and for speaking fees and the district court found that motion untimely and we are also appealing that decision so i'll begin with the court decision to slash our fee request in one half mr carter requested two hundred in fifteen hours and the court gave her one hundred  six hours and i'm going to this is a quote from him that's in our brief as well in a abbreviated fashion but when i was rereading the case it seems to me that this pretty much identifies the issue here and that in the hindley case you might recall the issue is kind of was if you just achieve partial success how should we determine what the few should be and the court  fun for sixty one us force for thirty six could be going on for thirty seven the court says there is no precise rule or formula for making these determinations and this is the deduction based on the results obtained the district court may attempt to identify specific hours that should be eliminated or it may simply reduce the award to account for the limited success in this case we think the court  improperly did this the latter of those the court just decided i'm going to reduce it by fifty percent the problem with that in this case is this is not a case where we had limited success we have changed complete relief  and before the district court the school district even asked the court to reduce the award based on the result of pain and the district court refused to do that so we we believe it is now the law the case that the attorneys see in this case cannot be reduced based on the results obtained under those circumstances the only thing we believe the court can do is what the court said here the district court made him to dinner five specific hours that should be eliminated that's what the district court did not do in this case rather the court just said generally we think some of this villain is excessive the council spent too much time on briefing our meeting with clients and i'm going to cut the fifty percent we believe that was an of discretion in unreasonable and inconsistent with the law on your your lot of the case argument did the district court conclude that your client prevailed in full yes yes where is that well that goes back to part of the confusion in the case of the district court specifically said mr harder is the prevailing party at the administrative level and that goes to the next issue while when we and yesterday file the twenty six j letter with the court that we were going to raise that the case of brittany over the bridge when bill school district and i think if you feel read that case it stands for the proposition that an id a attorneys fees claim becomes right when the time for appeal has run so the hearing officer makes his decision the attorneys speak claim is not ripe at that point it's only when the ninety days for filing an appeal is r that claim becomes right if you follow that logic into the district court the district court to issue to opinion the school district would have thirty days to appeal that decision so following britney oh the  district court's decision would not be final until the appeal time and even so the district court within fourteen days of its order directed us to file a petition for attorney fees noting specifically that at the beginning of the pinion we  a claim for attorney fees at the administrative level which is all we had prevailed on at that point and then second when the identified essence of preventing party he said we were the prevailing party at the administrative level so when we filed our petition for attorney fees we filed it and asked for our fees at the administrative level so we believe that was a possible construction maybe a mis construction of the district court order but it was certainly excusable the collector not following  petition as the district court may be anticipated that we would well you know one other problem here is that is that i'm not up on the attorney's fees for the trial portion you may not have technically violated federal civil procedure fifty four d to be i want to violate the spirit of the intent is when you when you have fourteen days of fall afia occasion from the judgment i'm presuming in this case i am going back a long and i will at some point that the judgment was not entered until the final feel ward was was was was entered but typically in a typical lawsuit if you if you're the prevailing party  in the employment discrimination case and you when you've got fourteen days to file you feel ok she i don't understand why she didn't file it within fourteen days after the order regardless of what the district judge said because that's what rule fifty four says you're supposed to do but britney o says our claim is not ripe until thirty days after the district court is in her judgment so but this year as the best of the federal rules say well your claim may not be right but we're talking about a fee application and one of the reasons we do that is because we want to be able to consolidate the fi epic asian with the merits of the case if they both come up before us we don't want to marry so germination in a free application in a separate appeal two years later well i would say the district court could have been more clear in its order in directing us to all of our fee request we were working with the fact that the district court said specifically you are the prevailing party at the administrative level and we also had to britain you know decision telling us that our claim wasn't right so the only claim that we thought we could submit at that point was the one the court had specifically found to be the prevailing party on and that was at the administrative law level i want to like to reserve out of my time you good morning or afternoon your orders that may place the court my name is cody case and i represent the parish school district and pierce arkansas while they are named after the capital friends i've been there and i can assure you there's no resembl e it's a small school district and i'm proud to represent them today in regards to this matter to answer your question judge grounder the district court did reverse on one point and that was the hearing officer in the underlying administrat administrative due process proceeding found that the school district had inadequately trained its employees and the district court reversed on that particular point to answer that question if i could take point one which is the fee petition again i know lawyer should never discuss math openly that would say that appellant has not contested the reduction of the face from three fifty an hour to two fifty by their own concession in their brief they've conceded that the reduction of thirteen thousand nine hundred fifty six was proper which leaves us with the argument of hours appellant submitted two hundred fifteen hours which was cut by the district court i would submit that this panel would rely on fires two thousand and fourteen case that the panel likely knows and judge grounder served on that panel and that was a case involving appellants counsel and a school related matter where she took a ninety three action where each student had been expelled from school she took that to federal court and from the honorable brian miller it was a four day trial she did win on the merits of her case she received nominal damages one dollar if she received she did prevail on the merits she requested fifty seven thousand two hundred twenty five dollars judge miller reduced that award to ten thousand again by my poor math that's an eighty two percent reduction it was appealed to this court they drew judge panel upheld as long as the court can show that it considered a lodestar then that is all that the court has to do in that particular case it was even conceded that the district court did not do a line by line each day to show which hours w excessive or unreasonable they just considered as a whole and that case the judge looked at three particular issues to determine that it was excessive so applying fires which is directly on point to the case here we know from the district court's order on face that he considered no less than six reasons to reduce the fate first of all you you he does or did novo review the entire it minute of records so we know that the judge was able to see the due process record and the arguments of counsel the court determined seven days of a due process hearing where you're literally sitting at a conference table in a superintendent's office and the rules of civil procedure and evidence are quite lax you're in front of the non lawyer who's hearing he found seven days was excessive given the the facts at issue and determine that it should have taken half that time he was relying on the arkansas department of education rules ten point zero one point three two which  you and they state that generally a due process hearing should take no longer than three days and should be done as soon as possible to expedite the process for the child so considering that he determined that seven days was too long it was more that half the time that was needed he also determined that sixteen witnesses called by the parent was ex and i also would note that he mentioned that seven days was more than most federal cases that he saw so considering that we know that the district court in this particular case did apply the lodestar and pursuant to fires that is all that is required and also look at our like discovery the case of gilbert gilbert the little rock and a circuit case one thousand nine hundred nine where is this court held that the trial court should weigh the hours claimed against his or her knowledge experience and expertise of the time that is required here the district court did that when he applied the lodestar also provided to you in the record at the desk that this particular district court judge has had no less than seven similar cases i d e a individuals with disabilities education act with this particular attorney so i think it's fair to say that they're quite familiar with each other and that he knows id the trial court knew ideate cases it was able to make that determination that this faith petition was simply excessive i would also point to the intent of congress just as a it was raised in the briefs the intent of the statute i d e a is to resolve these matters as quickly as possible there's built in rule stating that this is the parties must have a resolution conference it's required and in fact the attorneys cannot charge for the resolution conference which seems to suggest that the that congress wanted to provide parents with relief at least expense possible with these i d e a cases the student continues to be in school so they continue to have what are called i p meetings their individual education program conferences so you're constantly working with the school the intent of the statute is to promote an expeditious resolution to the underlying perceiving and that was of course the same here when judge holmes helped scuse me when the district court held that it was excessive on point two of the petition which is that appellant's council submitted a separate a separate a petition i would just note the time line the due process proceeding made its way through the administrative hearing and then on september twenty ninth of two thousand and fifteen appellants filed their their case for actually i take that back the pair school district filed their appeal and district court and i final judgment was entered april third two thousand and seventeen some year and a half later so there was a great span of time so i don't think it was abuse of discretion for the trial court to stay in this order which was a final  brief the issue of face that his order track to the federal rule fifty four which says within fourteen days face should be briefed and since we have had this huge time span from the administrative hearing as to when the finale of the district court came to a conclusion it obviously be very reasonable that the fate petition was ready the local rule was cited by the appellant as a potential exception in the local rule for the western for the eastern and western districts fifty four point one says that in addition to the fourteen days that a party most of us must submit a petition for phase after judgment in the event of a post trial motion the fourteen day period shall not commit appellant has argued that the fee petition is a post i think it's very hard to interpret that as being the intent i think the post trial motion in that regard would be something like a motion for reconsideration or a motion for a new trial that would toll the fix but in this case the fees were ripe to be presented and that was what the order call for the panel has no question that concludes the district's argument very well thank you i'd like to begin with there was one small issue that this court did reverse the hearing officer related to the training but did not change the relief we were provided also the quote that i began with from  distinguishes the fire's case because in the fires case that was a case where the results of taint did not justify a full fee that's not this case that distinguishes this case under those circumstances just as  you know he mentions the gilbert in this is a real problem i have with the court but the one of the things he picked out was excessive time meeting with the client now there's lots of talk in these cases about billing judgment using it were only supposed to bill we can only go we can't recover for time not properly billed to the client well if you i was in private practice and i spent all this time meeting with my client i can certainly bill my conduct for that time to show to to eliminate time for meeting with with client i think it is crosses the line that's unreasonable interviews of discretion you can say they spent too much time on a brief and you can specifically take that time out you know if it was four hours and you think they should have spent two hours go ahead and take that out but you can't apply just this across the border adduction and then like i said i think the one of the example of excess of time even with pi is unreasonable on  face that's time that you could always bill to the client i think going back to the issue of the the one b request you know that  again you have to put this in the britney o case was a case that involved the same lawyer teresa caldwell so this is imminently in first and foremost on her mind that decision and she's trying to follow that decision and we just the reason we wanted to bring that up is and it came up in discussions of another case when do we file our favorite titian so we're struggling with that issue and it would be great to get some guidance from this court on that thank you