Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_14-cv-02562/USCOURTS-cand-3_14-cv-02562-2/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 863
Nature of Suit: Social Security - DIWC/DIWW (405(g))
Cause of Action: 42:205 Denial Social Security Benefits

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

MELANIE LYNN POTTER,

Plaintiff,

v.

CAROLYN W. COLVIN,

Defendant.

Case No. 14-cv-02562-JSC 

ORDER RE: PLAINTIFF’S 

APPLICATION FOR ATTORNEYS’

FEES UNDER EAJA

Re: Dkt. No. 27

In this Social Security case, Plaintiff Melanie Lynn Potter seeks attorneys’ fees under the 

Equal Access to Justice Act (“EAJA”) following this Court’s remand of her supplemental security 

income (“SSI”) case for an award of benefits. (Dkt. No. 27.) Because the Social Security 

Commissioner does not contest the substantial justification of the original action, and the fees 

sought by Plaintiff are reasonable, Plaintiff’s motion is GRANTED, as explained below.

BACKGROUND

This case stems from Plaintiff’s appeal of the Social Security Administration’s denial of 

her application for disability benefits for a combination of physical and mental impairments, 

including: affective, anxiety, personality, and somatoform disorders; degenerative disc disease; 

knee pain; myofascial pain syndrome; headaches; and fibromyalgia. On April 29, 2015, the Court 

granted Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment, denied the Commissioner’s cross-motion for 

summary judgment, and remanded for an award of benefits concluding that the Administrative 

Law Judge (“ALJ”) committed legal error by improperly discounting Plaintiff’s testimony and the 

opinions of her doctors. (Dkt. No. 19.) The Commissioner thereafter filed a motion to alter or 

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amend the judgment pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e), which the Court denied. 

(Dkt. Nos. 22 & 26.) Plaintiff then filed her motion for EAJA fees in the amount of $17,239.94 

for time spent appealing the ALJ’s decision. (Dkt. No. 27.) In her reply brief, Plaintiff requested 

an additional $569.04 in additional fees for litigating the current motion. (Dkt. No. 30.)

LEGAL STANDARD

A court shall award a prevailing party its fees and expenses in an action against the United 

States unless “the position of the United States was substantially justified or special circumstances 

make an award unjust.” 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(A). The Supreme Court has defined “substantially 

justified” as “justified in substance or in the main–that is, justified to a degree that could satisfy a 

reasonable person,” or having a “reasonable basis both in law and fact.” Pierce v. Underwood, 487 

U.S. 552, 565 (1988). The government bears the burden of establishing substantial justification. 

Gutierrez v. Barnhart, 274 F.3d 1255, 1258 (9th Cir. 2001).

The starting point for determining whether a fee is reasonable is “the number of hours 

reasonably expended on the litigation multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate.” Hensley v. 

Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 433 (1983). The applicant must exercise “billing judgment,” i.e., the fees 

must be for services for which a private client would pay. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434 (“Hours that

are not properly billed to one’s client also are not properly billed to one’s adversary pursuant to 

statutory authority.”); Moreno v. City of Sacramento, 534 F.3d 1106, 1111 (9th Cir. 2008). Courts

should generally “defer to the winning lawyer’s professional judgment as to how much time he 

was required to spend on the case.” Moreno, 534 F.3d at 1112. An applicant may be awarded 

fees for hours spent litigating an EAJA fee award. INS v. Jean, 496 U.S. 154, 162 (1990).

DISCUSSION

Plaintiff moves for a total fee award of $17,808.98. (Dtk. No. 30.) The Commissioner 

does not contend that its position here was substantially justified. Plaintiff is therefore entitled to 

an award as a prevailing party under 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d). See Gutierrez, 274 F.3d at 1258 (“It is 

the government’s burden to show that its position was substantially justified.”). The only dispute 

between the parties is whether the number of hours expended on the appeal was reasonable. 

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A. The Fees Sought are Reasonable

In establishing the reasonableness of fees and expenses under EAJA, it is Plaintiff’s burden 

to document “the appropriate hours expended in the litigation by submitting evidence in support of 

those hours worked.” Gates v. Deukmejian, 987 F.2d 1392, 1397 (9th Cir. 1992). The appropriate 

number of hours includes all time “reasonably expended in pursuit of the ultimate result achieved, 

in the same manner that an attorney traditionally is compensated by a fee-paying client for all time 

reasonably expended on a matter.” Hensley, 461 U.S. at 431. 

Plaintiff has submitted declarations from the two attorneys who worked on her case: 

David Linden, her counsel of record who billed 3.55 hours of time on this matter, and Ralph 

Wilborn, a contract attorney hired by Mr. Linden who billed 87.25 hours of time (plus an 

additional 3 hours for preparation of the reply on the underlying motion for fees). (Dkt. Nos. 27-1, 

27-1, 30-1.) There is no dispute as to the hourly rate for either Mr. Linden or Mr. Wilborn. 

Rather, the sole dispute is the amount of time billed. In particular, the Commissioner argues that 

the fees are not reasonable because (1) they are the result of impermissible block billing, and (2) 

the overall amount billed is excessive. The Commissioner contends that Plaintiff is entitled to no 

more than $10,000 in fees which would represent approximately 52 hours of attorney time. For 

the reasons discussed below, the Court concludes that Plaintiff is entitled to the full amount of fees 

and costs requested.

1. Block Billing

The Commissioner objects to eight of Mr. Wilborn’s time entries as inadequately 

documented. “Block billing, which bundles tasks in a block of time, makes it extremely difficult 

for a court to evaluate the reasonableness of the number of hours expended.” Aranda v. Astrue, 

No. 08-340, 2011 WL 2413996, at *5 (D. Or. June 8, 2011). The eight time entries at issue range 

from eight hours on November 18, 2014 for “Draft the statement of facts. Partially research and 

draft Plaintiff’s Motion and Memorandum in support of Motion for Summary Judgment,” and 

another eight hours on December 19, 2014 for “Review the administrative record. Research and 

draft Plaintiff’s reply brief” to three entries for eight hours each on June 8, 9, and 10, 2015 for 

“partially research and draft Argument A.” (Dkt. No. 27-1 at 2.) While Mr. Wilborn could have 

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been more specific with respect to the latter billing entries, plaintiff’s counsel “is not required to 

record in great detail how each minute of his time was expended.” Hensley, 461 U.S. at 437 n.12. 

“[P]laintiff’s counsel can meet his burden—although just barely—by simply listing his hours and 

identifying the general subject matter of his time expenditures.” Fischer v. SJB-P.D. Inc., 214 

F.3d 1115, 1121 (9th Cir. 2000) (internal citations and quotations marked omitted). Notably, Mr. 

Wilborn’s reference to “argument A” referred to section A of Plaintiff’s opposition brief to the 

motion to alter judgment which dealt with application of the credit-as-true rule which “Defendant 

concedes [] presumably required substantial legal research.” (Dkt. No. 29 at 4:21.) In any event, 

the billing descriptions have not hampered this Court’s ability to evaluate the reasonableness of 

the hours billed, as is described below. The Court thus declines to reduce the hours sought for 

block billing.

2. Amount of Fees Sought

The Commissioner also contends that the overall time spent on briefing was excessive. To 

this end, the Commissioner points to the 30 hours Mr. Wilborn spent analyzing the administrative 

record, and researching and preparing the motion for summary judgment and the 11 hours spent 

analyzing the government’s opposition brief, and researching and drafting the reply brief. The 

Commissioner argues that social security cases are typically litigated in 15-30 hours and thus 

proposes that Plaintiff’s fee award be adjusted down to compensate counsel for approximately 52 

hours of attorney work. There are numerous problems with the Commissioner’s position.

First, courts may not apply de facto caps limiting the number of hours attorneys can 

reasonably expend on “routine” social security cases. See Costa v. Comm'r of Soc. Sec. Admin., 

690 F.3d 1132, 1133-37 (9th Cir. 2012) (“we question the usefulness of reviewing the amount of 

time spent in other cases to decide how much time an attorney could reasonably spend on the 

particular case before the court.”). Although “a district court will always retain substantial 

discretion in fixing the amount of an EAJA award,” Jean, 496 U.S. at 163, a reduction of fees 

greater than 10 percent requires clear, specific, and persuasive reasons from opposing counsel. 

Moreno, 534 F.3d at 1112, 1116 (allowing no more than a 10–percent “haircut” at the court’s 

discretion). The Commissioner’s proposal here would result in a more than 50 percent reduction 

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in the amount of fees and the amount of hours for which counsel is compensated. This is a clear 

contravention of Ninth Circuit precedent: “courts cannot drastically reduce awards simply because 

the attorney has requested compensation for more than forty hours or make reductions with a 

target number in mind. Instead, district courts must explain why the amount of time requested for 

a particular task is too high. Any other approach fails to give deference to the winning lawyer’s 

professional judgment.” Costa, 690 F.3d at 1136. 

Second, social security cases are not “routine”; rather, they “are often highly fact-intensive 

and require careful review of the administrative record, including complex medical evidence.” Id. 

at 1134 n.1. The administrative record in this case was nearly 1,000 pages, including numerous 

medical records detailing Plaintiff’s multiple physical and mental health conditions, as well as 

reports from six different physicians regarding her physical and mental health issues. That 

Plaintiff’s counsel spent 30 hours reviewing this record, researching the legal issues, and drafting 

the motion for summary judgment is not unreasonable given the voluminous medical record and 

the need to address the ALJ’s weighing of the medical evidence with respect to the findings of six

different physicians. See, e.g., Yesipovich v. Colvin, No. 15-00112 WHA, 2015 WL 5675869, at 

*7 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 28, 2015) (concluding that 49.67 hours were compensable given that the case 

was highly fact intensive, involved many administrative proceedings, and a voluminous 

administrative record); Stevenson v. Astrue, No. 10-04837 LB, 2012 WL 5412704, at *6 (N.D. 

Cal. Nov. 6, 2012) (rejecting argument that 59.3 hours was excessive because “[e]ach case has its 

own unique facts, which must be stated clearly and concisely, and each brief must contain 

arguments set forth in a coherent and persuasive way.”). The same is true for the 11 hours spent 

on the reply brief.

Finally, the Commissioner’s opposition largely ignores that over half of the time billed 

here—44.25 hours—was spent responding to the Commissioner’s motion to alter judgment. A 

motion which the Court not only denied, but in doing so, specifically noted that the motion raised 

numerous new arguments which the Commissioner failed to raise in her initial motion for 

summary judgment, including a lengthy discussion of the propriety of remand for an award of 

benefits which the Commissioner had previously only addressed in a footnote. (Dkt. No. 26 at 9.) 

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Thus, that the amount of fees sought here is so high is at least partially the Commissioner’s own 

doing—she could have raised the arguments in her initial motion for summary judgment and thus 

alleviated the need for a whole new round of briefing on the merits of Plaintiff’s case.1 Indeed, the 

amount of hours expended would be well within the amount the Commissioner now suggests is 

reasonable, but for the motion to alter judgment. (Compare Dkt. No. 27-1 at 2 (billing 41.75 

hours through briefing on the cross-motions for summary judgment) with Dkt. No. 29 at 8 (stating 

that approximately 52 hours would be reasonable). ).

3. Plaintiff is entitled to Fees for Preparing the Reply Brief

Under EAJA, a prevailing party is entitled to fees incurred in protecting the EAJA fee 

award in subsequent litigation by the Government over the amount of the EAJA fee award. Jean, 

496 U.S. at 161; see also Love v. Reilly, 924 F.2d 1492, 1497 (9th Cir. 1991). Plaintiff’s request 

for $569.04 for three additional hours of work preparing the underlying reply brief is reasonable. 

See, e.g., Lauser v. Colvin, No. 13-05990-MEJ, 2015 WL 1884330, at *5 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 23, 

2015) (awarding $1,110.21 for fees for preparing of the reply brief); Smith v. Astrue, 2012 WL 

3114595, at *5 (N.D. Cal. July 31, 2012) (granting a request for fees for 2.6 hours of work spent 

preparing the reply brief on the fees motion); Alfaro v. Astrue, No. 12–1999 EMC, 2013 WL 

85347, at *2 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 7, 2013) (awarding $311 in fees for preparing the reply brief).

B. The Fee Award Should be Paid Directly to Counsel 

According to the EAJA, “a court shall award to a prevailing party ... fees and other 

expenses ... incurred by that party in a civil action (other than cases sounding in tort) ... unless the 

court finds that the position of the United States was substantially justified.” 28 U.S.C. § 

2412(d)(1)(A) (emphasis added). In Astrue v. Ratliff, 560 U.S. 586, 594 (2010), the Supreme 

Court considered this provision of the EAJA and whether it makes a fee payable to the prevailing 

party or the attorney. The Supreme Court noted the absence of language in the EAJA explicitly 

directing fees to attorneys and compared EAJA with a provision in the Social Security Act making 

 

1 Given that the Commissioner’s motion to alter judgment was 60 percent longer than her initial 

motion for summary judgment, this suggests that she too likely spent considerable additional time 

on this second round of briefing. (Compare Dkt. No. 22 with Dkt. No. 17.)

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fee awards payable “to such attorney.” Id. at 595 (citing 42 U.S.C. § 406(b)(1)(A)). In so doing,

the Court concluded that “given the stark contrast between the SSA’s express authorization of 

direct payments to attorneys” and the absence of such language in EAJA, it would not interpret 

EAJA to “contain a direct fee requirement absent clear textual evidence supporting such an 

interpretation.” Id. at 595.

Nevertheless, courts in this district have concluded that Ratliff does not prevent payment of 

a fee award directly to the attorney if there has been a valid assignment and the plaintiff does not 

owe a debt to the government. See Hampton v. Colvin, No. 13-CV-04624-MEJ, 2015 WL 

1884313, at *7 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 23, 2015); Yesipovich v. Colvin, No. 15-00112-WHA, 2015 WL 

5675869, at *8 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 28, 2015); Neilsen v. Colvin, No. 13-173-NJV, 2014 WL 

1921317, at *3 (N.D. Cal. May 13, 2014); Lloyd v. Astrue, No. 11-4902-EMC, 2013 WL 3756424, 

at *4 (N.D. Cal. July 16, 2013); Palomares v. Astrue, No. 11-4515-EMC, 2012 WL 6599552, at 

*9 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 18, 2012. As Plaintiff assigned her EAJA fees to Mr. Linden (AR 97), 

Plaintiff’s award, subject to any debt offset, shall be paid directly to Mr. Linden.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, Plaintiff’s motion for an award of attorneys’ fees pursuant to 

EAJA in the amount of $17,808.98 is GRANTED. (Dkt. No. 27.)

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: November 23, 2015

________________________

JACQUELINE SCOTT CORLEY

United States Magistrate Judge

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