Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-18-16365/USCOURTS-ca9-18-16365-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 555
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Prison Condition
Cause of Action: 

---

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

VICTOR ANTONIO PARSONS; SHAWN 

JENSEN; STEPHEN SWARTZ; SONIA 

RODRIGUEZ; CHRISTINA VERDUZCO;

JACKIE THOMAS; JEREMY SMITH;

ROBERT CARRASCO GAMEZ, JR.;

MARYANNE CHISHOLM; DESIREE 

LICCI; JOSEPH HEFNER; JOSHUA 

POLSON; ARIZONA CENTER FOR 

DISABILITY LAW; CHARLOTTE

WELLS, on behalf of themselves and 

all others similarly situated,

Plaintiffs-Appellees,

v.

CHARLES L. RYAN, Director, Arizona 

Department of Corrections; 

RICHARD PRATT, Interim 

Division Director, Division of Health 

Services, Arizona Department of 

Corrections,

Defendants-Appellants.

No. 18-16358

D.C. No.

2:12-cv-00601-

ROS

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2 PARSONS V. RYAN

VICTOR ANTONIO PARSONS; SHAWN 

JENSEN; STEPHEN SWARTZ; SONIA 

RODRIGUEZ; CHRISTINA VERDUZCO;

JACKIE THOMAS; JEREMY SMITH;

ROBERT CARRASCO GAMEZ, JR.;

MARYANNE CHISHOLM; DESIREE 

LICCI; JOSEPH HEFNER; JOSHUA 

POLSON; CHARLOTTE WELLS, on 

behalf of themselves and all others 

similarly situated; ARIZONA CENTER 

FOR DISABILITY LAW,

Plaintiffs-Appellees,

v.

CHARLES L. RYAN, Director, Arizona 

Department of Corrections; RICHARD 

PRATT, Interim Division Director, 

Division of Health Services, Arizona 

Department of Corrections,

Defendants-Appellants.

Nos. 18-16365

18-16368

D.C. No.

2:12-cv-00601-

ROS

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PARSONS V. RYAN 3

VICTOR ANTONIO PARSONS; SHAWN 

JENSEN; STEPHEN SWARTZ; SONIA 

RODRIGUEZ; CHRISTINA VERDUZCO;

JACKIE THOMAS; JEREMY SMITH;

ROBERT CARRASCO GAMEZ, JR.;

MARYANNE CHISHOLM; DESIREE 

LICCI; JOSEPH HEFNER; JOSHUA 

POLSON; CHARLOTTE WELLS, on 

behalf of themselves and all others 

similarly situated,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

and

ARIZONA CENTER FOR DISABILITY 

LAW,

Plaintiff,

v.

CHARLES L. RYAN, Director, Arizona 

Department of Corrections; RICHARD 

PRATT, Interim Division Director, 

Division of Health Services, Arizona 

Department of Corrections,

Defendants-Appellees.

No. 18-16424

D.C. No.

2:12-cv-00601-

ROS

OPINION

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4 PARSONS V. RYAN

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Arizona

Roslyn Silver, District Judge, and David K. Duncan, 

Magistrate Judge, Presiding*

Argued and Submitted September 24, 2019

San Francisco, California

Filed January 29, 2020

Before: Sidney R. Thomas, Chief Judge, and J. Clifford 

Wallace and Consuelo M. Callahan, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Wallace

* Magistrate Judge Duncan retired on June 22, 2018, and the case 

was reassigned to District Court Judge Roslyn O. Silver.

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PARSONS V. RYAN 5

SUMMARY**

Prisoner Class Action

The panel affirmed in part, reversed in part, and 

dismissed in part, in consolidated appeals in a comeback 

case involving eleven district court orders, arising from a 

class action by Arizona state prisoners against Defendant 

Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) senior officials, 

challenging the ADC’s provision of healthcare.

The parties entered into a Stipulation in which 

Defendants agreed to comply with Performance Measures 

designed to improve the healthcare system at ten ADCoperated prisons. The Stipulation provided the process by 

which the parties must resolve disputes over compliance.

The panel affirmed the district court’s order holding the 

Defendants in contempt; affirmed in part and reversed in part 

the order awarding Plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees for work 

performed post-stipulation; affirmed the order partially 

granting and partially denying Defendants’ motion to 

terminate the monitoring of certain Performance Measures; 

affirmed the order requiring Defendants to reinstall Health 

Needs Request boxes for prisoners to submit forms 

requesting medical assistance; and dismissed the remainder 

of the medical needs appeal for lack of jurisdiction.

Concerning the contempt order, the panel rejected 

Defendants’ contention that the district court lacked the 

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It 

has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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6 PARSONS V. RYAN

power to hold them in contempt; and held that the district 

court acted within its authority in issuing the order to show 

cause, and thus Defendants’ noncompliance with that order 

properly served as the basis for the contempt order. The 

panel further held that because the contempt order was 

coercive and compensatory, it was civil in nature, and thus 

Defendants were not entitled to criminal due process

protections. As a result, Defendants did not establish that 

the district court deprived them of due process. The panel 

also held that the contempt order was sufficiently detailed to 

justify the $1,000 sanction per violation, and therefore 

remand was not required. The panel also held that any error 

committed by the district court in interpreting the Stipulation 

to require 100% compliance had no impact on the contempt 

order, and would therefore not be grounds for reversing that 

order. Finally, the panel rejected Defendants’ contention that 

the district court improperly modified the Stipulation.

Concerning the parties’ cross-appeals from the 

attorneys’ fees order, the panel held that Plaintiffs’ time 

entries were sufficient for the district court to make a

reasonable attorneys’ fees award, and thus the district court 

did not abuse its discretion in relying on them. The panel 

also held that the district court erroneously set Plaintiffs’ 

attorneys’ base hourly rate higher than the rate permitted by 

the Stipulation, but disagreed with the alternative rate 

proposed by Defendants. Specifically, the panel held that 

the hourly rate under 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d)(3) was the 

amount the Judicial Conference of the United States 

authorized and requested from Congress, and the district 

court did not err in consulting the Congressional Budget 

Summary to derive the rate. The panel vacated the 

attorneys’ fees order, and remanded to the district court to 

recalculate the fee award by determining the correct rates for 

each year and applying these rates to Plaintiffs’ time-entries. 

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PARSONS V. RYAN 7

The panel rejected Defendants’ argument that the district 

court erred in applying San Francisco Bay Area and 

Washington, D.C. paralegal market rates instead of the 

market rate in Phoenix. The panel held that the district court 

did not err in applying the Prison Litigation Reform Act 

(“PLRA”) maximum rate to the paralegal work performed in 

the San Francisco Bay Area, but the correct maximum rate 

was the amount the Judicial Conference authorized and 

requested from Congress. The panel reversed and remanded 

with instructions for the district court to re-calculate the fees 

awarded for paralegal work in light of the correct rates. 

Finally, the panel rejected Defendants’ contentions that the 

Stipulation did not allow for a multiplier and the PLRA did 

not allow for a multiplier, but agreed that the district court 

abused its discretion by concluding a multiplier was 

appropriate here. The panel vacated the attorneys’ fees 

order, and remanded for the district court to reweigh whether 

an enhancement was appropriate.

Concerning Plaintiffs’ contention on cross-appeal that 

the district court misinterpreted the law by denying Plaintiffs 

compensation for law clerk time, the panel held that 

compensation for unpaid law clerks was permissible under 

42 U.S.C. § 1988. The panel held, however, that Plaintiffs 

incorrectly assumed that the district court ruled that it could 

not award compensation for unpaid law clerk time, when it 

actually ruled that it would not. The panel denied Plaintiffs’ 

cross-appeal.

Concerning the medical needs appeal, the panel affirmed 

the district court’s termination order, which denied 

Defendants’ request to terminate certain Performance 

Measures. The panel rejected Defendants’ argument that the 

district court erred in finding that ADC’s monitoring system 

was unreliable. The panel also rejected Defendants’ 

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8 PARSONS V. RYAN

challenge to the district court’s legal interpretation of the 

Stipulation, and Defendants’ argument that the district court 

exceeded its authority in appointing a doctor to investigate 

ADC’s monitoring program. The panel affirmed the district 

court’s HNR-Box order, in which it ordered Defendants to 

reinstall HNR boxes in the same number and approximate 

locations as before the HNR-Box system was discontinued. 

The panel rejected Defendants’ three arguments challenging 

the HNR-Box order. The panel held that it lacked 

jurisdiction over the district court’s seven expert orders 

because they were neither final orders nor appealable 

collateral orders. The panel dismissed the appeal to the 

extent it concerned those orders.

COUNSEL

Timothy J. Berg (argued), Todd Kartchner, Courtney R. 

Beller, and Shannon McKeon, Fennemore Craig P.C.,

Phoenix, Arizona; Nicholas D. Acedo (argued), Daniel P. 

Struck, and Rachel Love, Struck Love Bojanowski & Acedo 

PLC, Chandler, Arizona; for Defendants-Appellants/CrossAppellees.

Corene T. Kendrick (argued), Donald Specter, and Rita K. 

Lomio, Prison Law Office, Berkeley, California; David C. 

Fathi, Amy Fettig, and Jennifer Wedekind, ACLU National 

Prison Project, Washington, D.C.; Maya S. Abela and Rose 

A. Daly-Rooney, Arizona Center for Disability Law, 

Tucson, Arizona; for Plaintiffs-Appellees/Cross-Appellants.

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PARSONS V. RYAN 9

OPINION

WALLACE, Circuit Judge:

The consolidated appeals in this comeback case arise 

from a class-action by prisoners in the custody of the 

Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) against senior 

ADC officials (Defendants), in which certain prisoners 

(Plaintiffs) challenged ADC’s provision of healthcare. 

Defendants appeal from eleven district court orders 

imposing contempt sanctions, awarding attorneys’ fees to 

Plaintiffs, appointing expert witnesses, and otherwise 

enforcing obligations under a settlement agreement 

Defendants entered into with Plaintiffs. Plaintiffs crossappeal from the attorneys’ fees order. We affirm in part, 

reverse in part, dismiss in part, and remand.

I.

In 2012, Plaintiffs brought a class action alleging, in 

relevant part, that Defendants were deliberately indifferent 

to the substantial risk of serious harm that ADC’s healthcare 

delivery policies and practices posed to Plaintiffs. On the eve 

of trial, the parties settled and entered into an agreement (the 

Stipulation), in which Defendants agreed to comply with 103 

“Performance Measures” designed to improve the healthcare 

system at ten ADC-operated prisons.

The Stipulation provides the process by which the parties 

must resolve disputes over compliance. In the event 

Plaintiffs believe Defendants are in non-compliance with 

one or more of the Performance Measures, the Stipulation 

requires Plaintiffs to first provide Defendants a written 

statement describing the alleged non-compliance, to which 

Defendants must provide a written response. Plaintiffs and 

Defendants must then meet and confer in an attempt to 

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10 PARSONS V. RYAN

resolve the dispute informally and, if informal efforts fail, 

participate in formal mediation. If the dispute is not resolved 

through formal mediation, either party may file a motion to 

enforce the Stipulation in the district court. If the district 

court “finds that Defendants have not complied with the 

Stipulation, it shall in the first instance require Defendants 

to submit a plan approved by the Court to remedy the 

deficiencies identified by the Court.”

If “the Court subsequently determines that the 

Defendants’ plan did not remedy the deficiencies, the Court 

shall retain the power to enforce the Stipulation through all 

remedies provided by law.” However, “the Court shall not 

have the authority to order Defendants to construct a new 

prison or to hire a specific number or type of staff unless 

Defendants propose to do so as part of a plan to remedy a 

failure to comply with any provision of this Stipulation.” The 

Stipulation also provides for attorneys’ fees and costs for 

Plaintiffs’ successful enforcement efforts.

Since executing the Stipulation, the parties have engaged 

in multiple disputes stemming from Defendants’ alleged 

non-compliance with some of the Performance Measures. 

We addressed a number of these disputes in our prior 

decision, Parsons v. Ryan, 912 F.3d 486 (9th Cir. 2018) 

(Parsons I). Because the facts and procedural history of this 

case were detailed in that decision, we discuss them here 

only as necessary to explain our decision in the consolidated 

appeals currently before us.

On October 10, 2017, the district court issued an order 

(the Order to Show Cause), in which it explained that, 

although Defendants had been given “wide latitude to revise 

their remediation plans over the last two years,” for “a subset 

of performance measures, these remediation plans have 

failed.” The district court ordered that “effective 

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PARSONS V. RYAN 11

immediately, Defendants shall comply with” eleven 

specified Performance Measures “for every class member” 

at specified prisons. The district court also ordered 

Defendants to “file a list of every instance of noncompliance with this Order during December 2017,” and 

ordered Defendants to “show cause why the Court should 

not impose a civil contempt sanction of $1,000 per incident 

of non-compliance commencing the month of December 

2017.”

Following hearings on Defendants’ compliance with the 

Order to Show Cause, the district court determined that 

Defendants had not taken all reasonable steps to comply with 

the Order to Show Cause and their compliance remained 

below 85% for certain of the Performance Measures listed in 

that order.

Accordingly, on June 22, 2018, the district court issued 

an order holding Defendants in contempt (the Contempt 

Order). The district court imposed “a financial penalty of 

$1,000 per failed instance” for each Performance Measure 

listed in the Order to Show Cause “that fell below the 

Stipulation’s threshold of 85%.” Cataloguing 1,445 such 

violations, the district court ordered Defendants to pay 

$1,445,000 “to be kept in the Registry until further order of 

the Court.” The district court entered final judgment against 

Defendants the same day.

Also on that same day the district court issued the 

following orders: an order awarding Plaintiffs attorneys’ 

fees for work performed post-Stipulation in the amount of 

$1,259,991.98 (the Attorneys’ Fees Order); an order 

partially granting and partially denying Defendants’ motion 

to terminate the monitoring of certain Performance 

Measures (the Termination Order); an order requiring 

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12 PARSONS V. RYAN

boxes) for prisoners to submit forms requesting medical 

assistance (the HNR-Box Order); an order requiring 

Defendants to file a plan to implement the recommendations 

made by BJ Millar of Advisory Board Consulting (the 

Millar-Plan Order);1 and an order requiring the parties to 

submit proposed experts to analyze “why deficiencies persist 

and to opine as to the policies and procedures necessary to 

compel compliance with the Stipulation” (the ComplianceExpert Order).

On December 11, 2018, the district court appointed 

Dr. Marc Stern as a Rule 706 expert to provide remediation 

plans and to review ADC’s monitoring process, and it 

ordered the parties to confer regarding the scope of 

Dr. Stern’s engagement (Stern-Appointment Order). On 

January 31, 2019, the district court issued an order accepting 

Dr. Stern’s engagement as agreed to by the parties in a joint 

submission, and resolved some disputes regarding the scope 

of Dr. Stern’s engagement (Stern-Terms of Engagement 

Order). On April 30, 2019, upon a request from Dr. Stern, 

the district court again clarified the scope of Dr. Stern’s work 

(Stern-Standard of Care Order). On May 30, 2019, the 

district court—in response to an additional issue raised by 

Dr. Stern concerning his ability to assess mental health 

delivery—appointed Dr. Bart Abplanalp as a Rule 706 

expert (Abplanalp-Appointment Order) focusing on mental 

health.

In this opinion, we address four consolidated appeals. 

First, Defendants appeal from the Contempt Order (the 

Contempt Appeal, No. 18-16358). Second, Defendants and 

1 The district court previously appointed Mr. Millar as a Rule 706 

expert to make recommendations regarding enforcement of the 

Stipulation (the Millar-Appointment Order).

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PARSONS V. RYAN 13

Plaintiffs cross-appeal from the Attorneys’ Fees Order (the 

Attorneys’ Fees Appeals, Nos. 18-16365 & 18-16424). 

Finally, Defendants appeal from the following orders related 

to the ongoing enforcement of the Stipulation (the Medical 

Needs Appeal, No. 18-16368): the Termination Order, the 

HNR-Box Order, the Millar-Plan Order, the MillarAppointment Order, the Compliance-Expert Order, the 

Stern-Appointment Order, the Stern-Terms of Engagement 

Order, the Stern-Standard of Care Order, and the AbplanalpAppointment Order.

For the reasons set forth below, we affirm the Contempt 

Order, affirm in part and reverse and remand in part the 

Attorneys’ Fees Order, affirm the Termination Order and the 

HNR-Box Order, and dismiss the remainder of the Medical 

Needs Appeal for lack of jurisdiction.

II.

We review the district court’s enforcement of a 

settlement agreement for an abuse of discretion. Wilcox v. 

Arpaio, 753 F.3d 872, 875 (9th Cir. 2014). Therefore, we 

will reverse only if the district court made an error of law or 

reached a result that was illogical, implausible, or without 

support in the record. See United States v. Hinkson, 585 F.3d 

1247, 1261–63 (9th Cir. 2009). “[W]e defer to any factual 

findings made by the district court in interpreting the 

settlement agreement unless they are clearly erroneous.” 

City of Emeryville v. Robinson, 621 F.3d 1251, 1261 (9th 

Cir. 2010). However, we review de novo the district court’s 

interpretation of a stipulation of settlement. See Jeff D. v. 

Andrus, 899 F.2d 753, 759 (9th Cir. 1989).

“An appellate court reviews an award of attorney’s fees 

and costs for an abuse of discretion.” Barjon v. Dalton, 

132 F.3d 496, 500 (9th Cir. 1997) (citations omitted). “A 

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14 PARSONS V. RYAN

district court abuses its discretion if its fee award is based on 

an inaccurate view of the law or a clearly erroneous finding 

of fact.” Id.

III.

Defendants challenge the Contempt Order on the 

grounds that (A) the district court lacked the power to hold 

them in contempt; (B) the district court imposed criminal 

contempt sanctions without affording them adequate due 

process; (C) the amount of the sanctions was excessive; 

(D) the district court improperly modified the Stipulation to 

require 100% compliance; and (E) the district court 

improperly modified the Stipulation by requiring reporting 

on all instances of non-compliance. We address these 

arguments in turn.

A.

We begin with Defendants’ argument that the district 

court lacked the power to hold them in contempt. Defendants 

provide two reasons why the district court supposedly lacked 

this power.

First, Defendants argue that the Stipulation is a private 

settlement agreement, and as such, it is not enforceable via 

the district court’s contempt powers. Defendants are correct, 

as a legal matter, that contempt is only available when the 

district court finds by clear and convincing evidence that a 

party “violated a specific and definite order of the court.”

Stone v. City and Cty. of San Francisco, 968 F.2d 850, 856 

n.9 (9th Cir. 1992).

However, this principle is unhelpful to Defendants 

because the Contempt Order was not based on violations of 

the Stipulation—but rather, it was explicitly based on 

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PARSONS V. RYAN 15

violations of the Order to Show Cause. The Contempt Order 

requires Defendants to pay a “financial penalty” as “a result” 

of their failure to “take all reasonable steps to comply with 

the Court’s [Order to Show Cause],” in light of Defendants’ 

“knowledge” of the Order to Show Cause and the fact that 

Defendants had an “opportunity to be heard about their noncompliance.” Moreover, the Contempt Order exclusively 

imposed penalties for Defendants’ failure to comply with 

some of the 11 Performance Measures outlined in the Order 

to Show Cause—not for a failure to comply with any of the 

other 92 Performance Measures outlined in the Stipulation. 

Compare Order to Show Cause (ordering Defendants to 

comply with Performance Measures 11, 35, 39, 44, 46, 47, 

50, 51, 52, 54, 66), with Contempt Order (holding 

Defendants in contempt for violating Performance Measures 

35, 44, 46, 47, 50, 51, 52, 54, 66).

Second, Defendants argue that their noncompliance with 

the Order to Show Cause cannot be the basis for the 

Contempt Order because the Order to Show Cause is, itself, 

void. According to Defendants, an order to show cause is 

“merely a vehicle for enforcing a court’s prior order”—not 

for enforcing a private agreement like the Stipulation. While 

Defendants are correct that the Order to Show Cause did not 

assert that any past violation of the district court’s orders had 

occurred, we disagree that it is void.

The Stipulation provides the district court the authority 

to “enforce this Stipulation through all remedies provided by 

law,” subject to a few limitations. Ordering Defendants to 

comply with a specific subset of the Performance Measures 

they agreed to in the Stipulation is one such “remed[y] 

provided by law,” namely, an injunction requiring specific 

performance. We have previously upheld the district court’s 

power to issue such injunctions to enforce the Stipulation in 

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16 PARSONS V. RYAN

this case. See Parsons I, 912 F.3d at 499–501 (upholding the 

Outside Provider Order, which required Defendants to “use 

all available community healthcare services” to ensure 

compliance with certain Performance Measures).

Moreover, “the Stipulation is clear on the limits of the 

district court’s authority to enforce the Stipulation.” Parsons 

I, 912 F.3d at 497. One of those limitations deprives the 

district court of “the authority to order Defendants to 

construct a new prison or to hire a specific number or type 

of staff unless Defendants propose to do so as part of a plan 

to remedy a failure to comply with any provision of this 

Stipulation.” This limitation would be superfluous if the 

district court lacked injunctive powers generally. “It is a 

cardinal rule of the construction of contracts that some effect 

is to be given, if possible, to every part thereof.” Aldous v. 

Intermountain Bldg. & Loan Ass’n of Ariz., 284 P. 353, 355 

(Ariz. 1930). Although the district court’s enforcement 

authority is limited by the terms of the Stipulation, 

Defendants have not shown that the Order to Show Cause 

exceeds those limitations or is otherwise inconsistent with 

other terms of the Stipulation. Cf., e.g., Parsons I, 912 F.3d

at 503 (“The parties set the benchmark for inclusion in the 

subclass at 14 hours; the district court cannot unilaterally 

move that benchmark to 15.5 hours”).

We conclude that the district court acted within its 

authority in issuing the Order to Show Cause, and thus 

Defendants’ noncompliance with that order may properly 

serve as the basis for the Contempt Order. See Spallone v. 

United States, 493 U.S. 265, 276 (1990) (explaining that 

federal courts have inherent power to enforce their lawful 

orders through contempt).

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PARSONS V. RYAN 17

B.

Defendants next argue that the Contempt Order must be 

vacated because it imposed criminal sanctions on 

Defendants without affording them due process.2 Plaintiffs 

concede that criminal due process protections (such as a jury 

trial) were not observed, but contend that the Contempt 

Order was civil in nature. Thus, the relevant question is 

whether the Contempt Order was criminal or civil.

To determine whether contempt sanctions are civil or 

criminal, we examine “the character of the relief itself.” Int’l 

Union, United Mine Workers of Am. v. Bagwell, 512 U.S. 

821, 828 (1994). A “sanction generally is civil if it coerces 

compliance with a court order or is a remedial sanction 

meant to compensate the complainant for actual losses.” 

Ahearn ex rel. N.L.R.B. v. Int’l Longshore & Warehouse 

Union, Locals 21 & 4, 721 F.3d 1122, 1129 (9th Cir. 2013), 

citing Bagwell, 512 U.S. at 829. “A criminal sanction, in 

contrast, generally seeks to punish a ‘completed act of 

disobedience.’” Id., quoting Bagwell, 512 U.S. at 829.

Here, the “character” of the sanction was primarily 

coercive. The district court explicitly stated that the purpose 

of holding Defendants in contempt was to “compel 

compliance” because the “mere threat of monetary 

sanctions” in the Order to Show Cause was “not sufficient.” 

Moreover, the district court utilized the paradigmatic 

coercive contempt sanction of prospective, conditional fines 

2 Defendants argue in a footnote that, “[e]ven if this Court finds that 

the Sanctions Order was civil in nature, a heightened standard of due 

process was still required.” Defendants do not elaborate on what this

heightened standard is or how the district court failed to provide it. This 

argument is therefore forfeited due to inadequate briefing. See 

Greenwood v. F.A.A., 28 F.3d 971, 977 (9th Cir. 1994).

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18 PARSONS V. RYAN

outlined in the Order to Show Cause and ordered Defendants 

to continue filing monthly reports regarding their 

compliance. See Shell Offshore Inc. v. Greenpeace, Inc.,

815 F.3d 623, 629 (9th Cir. 2016) (“coercive civil sanctions, 

intended to deter, generally take the form of conditional 

fines”).

The sanction was also compensatory. The district court 

concluded that “civil contempt sanctions against 

Defendants” were warranted “to address Plaintiffs’ injuries 

resulting from [Defendants’] noncompliance.” To that end, 

the district court ruled that it would use the funds for the 

benefit of the class “to further compliance with the 

healthcare requirements of the Stipulation,” and it ordered 

the parties to provide proposals for how best to do so. Cf. 

Shell Offshore, 815 F.3d at 629 n.4 (“Whether fines are 

payable to the opposing party or to the court may also be a 

factor in deciding whether they are coercive or 

compensatory”). Furthermore, Defendants could not purge 

the fines after the violations occurred, which indicates that 

the harm suffered by Plaintiffs in those months needed to be 

redressed. See id. at 629 (“Because civil compensatory 

sanctions are remedial, they typically take the form of 

unconditional monetary sanctions”).

Although the “line between civil and criminal contempt” 

can become “blurred” in cases where “noncompensatory 

sanctions” are predicated on “out-of-court disobedience to 

complex injunctions,” no such blurriness exists here 

because, as explained above, the sanction in the Contempt 

Order was also compensatory. Ahearn, 721 F.3d at 1129. 

The Supreme Court’s decision in Bagwell “leaves unaltered 

the longstanding authority of judges . . . to enter broad 

compensatory awards for all contempts through civil 

proceedings.” Id. at 1130, citing Bagwell, 512 U.S. at 838.

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PARSONS V. RYAN 19

Finally, nothing in the record suggests that the sanctions 

were punitive. Prospective, conditional fine schedules do not 

bear any of the hallmarks of punitive contempt, such as 

retroactivity and determinacy. See Bagwell, 512 U.S. at 828–

30. The fact that Defendants had no purge option after 

December 2017 does not necessarily reflect that the 

sanctions were imposed as punishment because Defendants 

were able to avoid the sanctions by complying with the 

October 2017 Order to Show Cause before the December 

2017 reporting period. See CBS v. FilmOn.com, Inc., 

814 F.3d 91, 102 (2d Cir. 2016) (“[A] court’s sanction does 

not become criminal even if the court does not afford the 

party an additional opportunity to purge because the 

sanctions were prompted by the party’s previous failure to 

purge”). Defendants’ complaints about the district court’s 

oral remarks alluding to punishment do not alter our 

conclusion because subjective intent is not the applicable 

standard for determining whether contempt is criminal. See 

Bagwell, 512 U.S. at 828; see also Nat’l Abortion Fed’n v. 

Ctr. for Med. Progress, 926 F.3d 534 (9th Cir. 2019) 

(rejecting the “misguided” argument that sanctions “must be 

deemed criminal in nature because the district court stated 

that it was imposing the sanctions in part to deter future 

violations of the preliminary injunction”).

Because the Contempt Order was coercive and 

compensatory, we hold that it was civil in nature, and thus, 

Defendants were not entitled to criminal due process 

protections. As a result, Defendants have not established that 

the district court deprived them of due process.

C.

Defendants next argue that remand of the Contempt 

Order is required because the district court failed to make the 

requisite findings to justify a $1,000 sanction per violation. 

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Defendants’ sole authority for this point is Shuffler v. 

Heritage Bank, 720 F.2d 1141, 1148 (9th Cir. 1983).

As we explained above, the Contempt Order here was 

coercive and compensatory. Coercive sanctions may only be 

imposed “after a reasoned consideration” of “the character 

and magnitude of the harm threatened by the continued 

contumacy, and the probable effectiveness of any suggested 

sanction in bringing about the result desired.” Shuffler, 

720 F.2d at 1148. Similarly, compensatory fines “must be 

based on” the “actual losses sustained as a result of 

contumacy.” Id.

The instant case is distinguishable from Shuffler. In that 

case, we vacated contempt sanctions because the district 

court made “no written statement of the purpose or purposes 

underlying its imposition of a $500 daily fine” and the 

appellee “ha[d] not pointed to any portion of the record 

demonstrating that the district court imposed the fine after a 

reasoned consideration of these criteria.” Id. at 1147–48. 

Here, by contrast, the district court explained why it was 

holding Defendants in contempt and why it selected the 

prospective fine schedule. For example, in the Order to 

Show Cause, when establishing a prospective and 

conditional fine schedule, the district court wrote:

Any exercise of the Court’s contempt 

authority in this matter would be intended to 

spur Defendants’ compliance with the 

performance measures that they have 

contractually agreed to perform. Shell 

Offshore Inc. v. Greenpeace, Inc., 815 F.3d 

623, 629 (9th Cir. 2016) (describing coercive 

civil contempt). When Defendants provide 

the health care required by the Stipulation, 

the contempt will purge. Int’l Union, UMWA 

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PARSONS V. RYAN 21

v. Bagwell, 512 U.S. 821, 829 (1994). The 

power of economic carrots and sticks is 

clearly understood by Defendants. (Doc. 

2295; Doc. 2330 at 195–197) Accordingly, 

the Court expects this to be an effective and 

short-lived tool that creates compliance with 

the Stipulation.

This reasoning demonstrates that the district court gave 

“reasoned consideration” to “the probable effectiveness of 

any suggested sanction in bringing about the result desired.” 

Shuffler, 720 F.2d at 1148.

Similarly, in the Contempt Order, the district court 

extensively documented Defendants’ failures to comply 

with the district court’s Performance Measures and 

explained that the sanctions were warranted to “address 

Plaintiffs’ injuries resulting from [Defendants’] 

noncompliance.” This explanation demonstrates that the 

district court gave “reasoned consideration” to “the character 

and magnitude of the harm” and to “actual losses sustained 

as a result of contumacy.” Shuffler, 720 F.2d at 1148.

Based on the reasoning in the district court’s orders, we 

conclude that such orders were sufficiently detailed and 

therefore remand is not required.

D.

We turn now to Defendants’ argument that the district 

court improperly modified the Stipulation by requiring 

100% compliance with the Performance Measures. The 

Stipulation defines “substantial compliance” during the 

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relevant timeframe3 as “meeting or exceeding an eighty-five 

percent (85%) threshold for the particular Performance 

Measure that applies to a specific complex.” In the Contempt 

Order, the district court interpreted the Stipulation’s 85% 

threshold as “simply a triggering point for the Court’s 

intervention,” and stated that the “Stipulation requires 100% 

compliance with each of its Performance Measures.” 

Defendants argue that the district court improperly modified 

the Stipulation by requiring 100% compliance with the 

Performance Measures.

We have already rejected an analogous argument from 

Defendants concerning the Outside Provider Order (OPO) in 

Parsons I, 912 F.3d at 500. The OPO required Defendants to 

use outside medical providers to treat prisoners whom 

Defendants had failed to treat within the time-frame detailed 

in Performance Measures “immediately after the expiration” 

of that time-frame. Id. at 499–500. Defendants objected to 

the OPO on the grounds that it “effectively re-writes the 

Stipulation to require 100 percent compliance with the 

performance measures, rather than 80 percent.” Id.

In rejecting this argument, we held that “[a]lthough the 

OPO requires Defendants to use outside providers if 

Defendants cannot otherwise treat inmates within the 

prescribed time frame, it does not, in fact change the 

threshold for substantial compliance,” which was 80% at 

that time. Id. at 500. As we explained:

3 The Contempt Order was based on Defendants’ noncompliance in 

December 2017. The Stipulation provides an 85% threshold for 

substantial compliance “[a]fter the first twenty four months after the 

effective date of this Stipulation,” which was February 25, 2015.

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[T]he OPO is simply a remedy to address 

Defendants’ non-compliance, it does not 

change what constitutes compliance for 

purposes of avoiding judicial enforcement. 

So long as Defendants meet or exceed the 

80 percent benchmark provided in the 

Stipulation, the OPO has no effect. 

Therefore, we disagree with the notion that 

the OPO effectively requires 100 percent 

compliance.

Parsons I, 912 F.3d at 500.

The same reasoning applies here. The district court 

determined that the Stipulation requires 100% compliance 

once a Performance Measure falls below the 85% threshold, 

which serves as a “triggering point for the Court’s 

intervention.” The district court imposed sanctions only for 

Performance Measures that “have remained below the 

Stipulation’s 85% threshold.” Thus, as with the OPO, “the 

[contempt order] is simply a remedy to address Defendants’ 

non-compliance, it does not change what constitutes 

compliance for purposes of avoiding judicial enforcement.” 

Parsons I, 912 F.3d at 500. “So long as Defendants meet or 

exceed the [85] percent benchmark provided in the 

Stipulation, the [Contempt Order] has no effect.” Id.

Simply put, the district court did not exercise its 

discretion to impose contempt sanctions based on its legal 

conclusion that “[t]he Stipulation requires 100% compliance 

with each of its Performance Measures.” Therefore, any 

error committed by the district court in interpreting the 

Stipulation to require 100% compliance had no impact on 

the Contempt Order, and would therefore not be grounds for 

reversing that order.

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E.

Finally, Defendants seek reversal of the Contempt Order 

on the grounds that the district court purportedly modified 

the Stipulation by ordering Defendants to “file monthly 

reports reflecting every instance of noncompliance” for 

certain Performance Measures “that are at less than 85% 

compliance.” As Defendants point out, compliance under the 

Stipulation “shall be measured and reported monthly at each 

of ADC’s ten (10) complexes [based on] . . . a protocol to be 

used for each performance measure, attached as Exhibit C.” 

Exhibit C establishes the measuring protocol for each 

Performance Measure, and the most common method is 

through a random sampling of 10 records each month. 

Defendants contend that, because the Stipulation sets forth a 

random sampling process for measuring compliance, the 

Stipulation prohibits the district court from ordering 

comprehensive reporting.

We start with the premise that the district court “cannot 

unilaterally” alter the terms of the Stipulation. Parsons I, 

912 F.3d at 503; see also Isaak v. Mass. Indem. Life Ins. Co., 

623 P.2d 11, 14 (Ariz. 1981) (“It is not within the power of 

[a] court to ‘revise, modify, alter, extend, or remake’ a 

contract to include terms not agreed upon by the parties”). 

However, this principle does not resolve the dispute here 

because the Stipulation also authorizes the district court to 

remedy “deficiencies” via “all remedies provided by law”

(with a few exceptions that do not apply here), and 

Defendants do not argue that ordering monthly reports to 

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PARSONS V. RYAN 25

ascertain compliance with a court-approved plan is not a 

remedy at law.4

Instead, Defendants appear to conflate the fact that the 

Stipulation requires a random sampling to measure

compliance with the fact that the Contempt Order requires 

comprehensive reporting. However, the two requirements 

are distinct and not necessarily inconsistent. While ordering 

comprehensive reporting of noncompliance falls within the 

district court’s authority under the Stipulation pursuant to the 

“all remedies provided by law” clause, the district court may 

not measure noncompliance using comprehensive monthly 

reporting because the Stipulation expressly sets forth 

random sampling protocols for measuring compliance. Cf. 

Parsons I, 912 F.3d at 503 (“The parties set the benchmark 

for inclusion in the subclass at 14 hours; the district court 

cannot unilaterally move that benchmark to 15.5 hours”).

Although somewhat unclear, the record suggests the 

district court measured compliance pursuant to the random 

sampling protocols set forth in the Stipulation. In the 

Contempt Order, the district court determined that certain 

Performance Measures were below the 85% substantial 

compliance threshold by reviewing Defendants’ Notice 

Relating to Performance Measures for the May 9, 2018 

Status Hearing (Dist. Dkt. No. 2801-1). That document, 

unfortunately, does not indicate how Defendants measured 

compliance. However, given Defendants’ litigation position 

in this case—namely that comprehensive manual reporting 

is an “impossible task” which contravenes the agreed-upon 

4 Nor could they; district courts routinely issue such orders. See, e.g., 

Coleman v. Brown, No. CIV. S-90-520 LKK, 2014 WL 1091864, at *3 

(E.D. Cal. Mar. 18, 2014) (ordering “monthly reports as to whether the 

project has been or can be accelerated”).

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method in the Stipulation—it seems almost certain that 

Defendants calculated their substantial compliance based on 

the Stipulation’s random sampling protocols. Defendants’ 

failure to argue otherwise in their briefs further suggests that 

they measured compliance pursuant to the random sampling 

method provided by the Stipulation. On this record, we do 

not conclude that the district court based its Contempt Order 

on comprehensive measurements, and thus there was no 

reversible error.

In sum, we conclude the district court did not abuse its 

discretion in issuing the Contempt Order.

IV.

We turn now to the parties’ cross-appeals from the 

Attorneys’ Fees Order, in which the district court awarded 

fees pursuant to Paragraph 43 of the Stipulation. That 

paragraph provides for attorneys’ fees and costs as follows:

In the event that Plaintiffs move to enforce 

any aspect of this Stipulation and the 

Plaintiffs are the prevailing party with respect 

to the dispute, the Defendants agree that they 

will pay reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs, 

including expert costs, to be determined by 

the Court. The parties agree that the hourly 

rate of attorneys’ fees is governed by 

42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d).

In the Attorneys’ Fees Order, the district court awarded 

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Stipulation,5 holding that such fees were compensable under 

the Stipulation because that work was “driven by Plaintiffs’ 

attempts to enforce the Stipulation.” The district court set the 

hourly rate for each year at Plaintiffs’ suggested base rate, 

and applied a 2X fee enhancement. The district court also 

granted Plaintiffs copying costs but denied them unpaid law 

clerk time. The district court calculated the award at 

$1,259,991.98 and subsequently entered judgment against 

Defendants for that amount.

A.

Defendants argue that the Attorneys’ Fees Order should 

be reversed because the district court erroneously 

(1) awarded fees and costs in excess of the fees authorized 

by the Stipulation; (2) set the base hourly rate too high; 

(3) set the paralegal based hourly rate based on the wrong 

geographic market; and (4) improperly enhanced the fee 

award by a 2X multiplier. We address these arguments in 

turn.

1.

Defendants contend that Paragraph 43 only permits an 

award of fees and costs for work that was directly related to 

a successful motion to enforce a provision in the Stipulation 

that “expressly requires Defendants to do some act.” The 

district court rejected this interpretation as “inappropriately 

narrow” because activities other than motion practice were 

also “driven by Plaintiffs’ attempts to enforce the 

stipulation.” Defendants argue that the district court’s 

5 Attorneys’ fees prior to the Stipulation were negotiated separately 

and are not at issue here.

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interpretation of the Stipulation is erroneous in light of the 

“move to enforce” language in Paragraph 43.

Reviewing the district court’s legal interpretation de 

novo,6 Andrus, 899 F.2d at 759, we agree with the district 

court. We reject Defendants’ contention that Paragraph 43 

only applies to time spent related to documents bearing the 

title “Motion to Enforce.” While Paragraph 43 does contain 

the phrase “move to enforce,” we decline to interpret the 

Stipulation as only providing fees and costs for work 

pertaining to motions.

The term “move” is somewhat ambiguous because it 

“may be susceptible to multiple interpretations,” Taylor v. 

State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 854 P.2d 1134, 1140 (Ariz. 

1993). Considering “the plain meaning of the words as 

viewed in the context of the contract as a whole,” Earle Invs., 

LLC v. S. Desert Med. Ctr. Partners, 394 P.3d 1089, 1092 

(Ariz. Ct. App. 2017), we construe the term to mean “to 

prompt or rouse to the doing of something”—which, in this 

case, refers to the process the Stipulation requires Plaintiffs 

to engage in to “prompt” Defendants or the Court to enforce 

the Stipulation. See Move, MerriamWebster Dictionary (11th ed. 2019), https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/move; see also id. (defining “move” 

as “a step taken especially to gain an objective”). This 

interpretation is compelling when viewing the Stipulation 

6 Plaintiffs argue that we should give deference to the district court’s 

interpretation of the Stipulation in light of the district court’s extensive 

oversight of the enforcement process. However, Plaintiffs’ cited 

authority only supports the proposition that a court of appeals may give 

deference to a district court’s interpretation of a consent decree. Because 

we affirm without providing such deference, we do not reach the 

question of whether such deference extends to the district court’s 

interpretation of the Stipulation.

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“as a whole” because the Stipulation expressly requires that 

Plaintiffs’ enforcement efforts begin with providing 

Defendants written notice of non-compliance, followed by 

meeting and conferring with Defendants to resolve disputes 

informally, which, if necessary, is followed by mediation, 

and finally—if all of those steps do not “prompt” Defendants 

to change course—Plaintiff may file a motion before the 

district court. Thus, any enforcement motions filed in court 

are merely the proverbial tip of the iceberg for the 

enforcement process required by the Stipulation. In light of 

these requirements, we conclude it would be unreasonable 

and defy the expectations of the parties to limit 

reimbursements only to work related to documents bearing 

the moniker “motion to enforce.” See Bryceland v. Northey, 

772 P.2d 36, 39 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1989) (“We will interpret a 

contract in a manner which gives a reasonable meaning to 

the manifested intent of the parties rather than an 

interpretation that would render the contract unreasonable”).

We also reject Defendants’ contention that Paragraph 43 

only applies to the enforcement of “provision[s] in the 

Stipulation that expressly require[] Defendants to do some 

act.” The plain language of the Stipulation supports an award 

of fees for enforcement of “any aspect” of the Stipulation in 

which Plaintiffs “are the prevailing party with respect to the 

dispute.” Plaintiffs have repeatedly prevailed in disputes to 

enforce aspects of the Stipulation separate and apart from 

provisions directly requiring Defendants to act. For example, 

despite the fact that the Stipulation defined being “seen” by 

a mental health professional as “an encounter that takes 

place in a confidential setting outside the prisoner’s cell, 

unless the prisoner refuses to exit his or her cell for the 

encounter,” Defendants unilaterally implemented a new 

definition of being “seen” to include non-confidential group 

and cell-front encounters (where the prisoner is not allowed 

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to leave the cell). Had Plaintiffs not successfully enforced 

the definition of being “seen,” Defendants’ interpretation 

would have inflated Defendants’ compliance scores for 

various Performance Measures pertaining to mental health, 

and effectively stifled the enforcement of the Stipulation. 

Denying Plaintiffs fees and costs for work relating to this 

interpretative dispute merely because it did not directly 

enforce a provision that “expressly requires Defendants to 

do some act” contravenes the plain language of Paragraph 

43, which provides an award of fees for enforcement of “any 

aspect” of the Stipulation.

Finally, Defendants argue that Plaintiffs’ time entries 

failed to establish their entitlement to fees and costs under 

Paragraph 43 because those entries did not contain sufficient 

details identifying a specific successful motion to enforce. 

The district court concluded that “[a]ll of these matters are 

before the Court because Defendants have not satisfied their 

obligations under the Stipulation thereby requiring Plaintiffs 

to move to enforce it.” We review the district court’s award 

for abuse of discretion, under which a “district court abuses 

its discretion if its fee award is based on an inaccurate view 

of the law or a clearly erroneous finding of fact.” Barjon, 

132 F.3d at 500.

Defendants fail to establish that the district court based 

its award on an inaccurate view of the law: as we explained 

above, the Stipulation does not limit reimbursements to 

time-entries relating to a successful motion to enforce. 

Moreover, attorneys “need only ‘keep records in sufficient 

detail that a neutral judge can make a fair evaluation of the 

time expended, the nature and need for the service, and the 

reasonable fees to be allowed.’” United Steelworkers of Am. 

v. Retirement Income Plan for Hourly-Rated Emps. of 

ASARCO, Inc., 512 F.3d 555, 565 (9th Cir. 2008) (citations 

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PARSONS V. RYAN 31

omitted). A review of the billing entries flagged by 

Defendants does not suggest that the court committed legal 

error under this standard.7

We evaluate under the “clearly erroneous” standard the 

district court’s factual finding that the activities for which 

Plaintiffs sought compensation were eligible enforcement 

activities. Barjon, 132 F.3d at 500. In doing so, we are 

mindful that the determination of fees “should not result in a 

second major litigation,” and “trial courts need not, and 

indeed should not, become green-eyeshade accountants.” 

Fox v. Vice, 563 U.S. 826, 838 (2011). Rather, the “essential 

goal in shifting fees (to either party) is to do rough justice, 

not to achieve auditing perfection.” Id. “So trial courts may 

take into account their overall sense of [an action], and may 

use estimates in calculating and allocating an attorney’s 

time” and “appellate courts must give substantial deference 

to these determinations, in light of the district court’s 

superior understanding of the litigation.” Id. As the Supreme 

Court declared, “[w]e can hardly think of a sphere of judicial 

decision-making in which appellate micromanagement has 

less to recommend it.” Id.

The parties agree that the district court erroneously 

awarded fees for certain activities that the district court had 

7 In fact, some of the entries flagged by Defendants appear to meet 

even the more demanding standard Defendants proffered. For example, 

two entries at the end of March 2016 provide that one attorney

“restructured and drafted Motion to Enforce” and another “[e]dit[ed]

motion to enforce.” A review of the docket leads to the reasonable 

conclusion that these entries pertain to the motion to enforce filed on 

April 11, 2016.

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previously ruled were prohibited.8 However, apart from 

these entries, Defendants fail to establish that the district 

court’s factual findings were “clearly erroneous,” Barjon, 

132 F.3d at 500. By lodging blanket objections against 

nearly all of Plaintiffs’ entries, Defendants invite the exact 

type of “appellate micromanagement” the Supreme Court 

cautioned against in Fox. We conclude that Plaintiffs’ time 

entries were sufficient for the district court to make a 

reasonable attorneys’ fees award, and thus the district court 

did not abuse its discretion in relying on them.

2.

Defendants next argue that that the district court 

erroneously set Plaintiffs’ attorneys’ base hourly rate higher 

than the rate permitted by the Stipulation. For the reasons set 

forth below, we agree that the district court erroneously set 

the rate higher than permitted under the Stipulation, but 

disagree with the alternative rate proposed by Defendants.

The Stipulation provides that “the hourly rate of 

attorneys’ fees is governed by 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d).” 

Section 1997e(d) provides: “No award of attorney’s fees . . . 

shall be based on an hourly rate greater than 150 percent of 

the hourly rate established under section 3006A of Title 18 

for payment of court-appointed counsel.” See 42 U.S.C. 

§ 1997e(d)(3). Section 3006A, which codifies the Criminal 

Justice Act (CJA), requires that the Judicial Conference of 

the United States “develop guidelines for determining the 

8 As outlined in the parties’ briefs, these hours include: 2.9 hours 

related to correspondence with the media and appellate matters and 

8.1 hours for maximum-custody Performance Measures. As explained 

below, we remand the Attorneys’ Fees Order for other reasons. On 

remand, the district court should modify its order to exclude these entries 

from any fees award.

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PARSONS V. RYAN 33

maximum hourly rates for each circuit” and authorizes the 

Judicial Conference of the United States to “raise the 

maximum hourly rates . . . at intervals of not less than 1 year 

each,” subject to certain limits not relevant here. See 

18 U.S.C. § 3006A(d)(1).

The district court determined that the Judicial 

Conference set this rate at $146 an hour for 2017 based on a 

document prepared by the Administrative Office of the U.S. 

Courts called the “Judiciary Fiscal Year 2017 Congressional 

Budget Summary” (“Congressional Budget Summary”). It 

then multiplied this $146 rate by 150% and arrived at the rate 

of $219 per hour for fiscal year 2017. The district court 

appears to have undertaken the same analysis in setting 

Plaintiffs’ rates at $216 per hour for work performed in 

2016, and at $213 per hour for work performed in 2015.

While Plaintiffs essentially defend the district court’s 

decision,9 Defendants argue that the district court erred in 

two ways. First, Defendants argue that the district court erred 

by consulting the Congressional Budget Summary in order 

to derive the base hourly rate. Instead, according to 

Defendants, the district court should have derived the rate 

from Volume 7 of the Guide to Judiciary Policy (the Guide). 

Second, Defendants contend that the $146 figure that the 

district court derived from the Congressional Budget 

Summary does not reflect the amount that the Judicial 

Conference set, and instead, that rate merely represents the 

9 Plaintiffs also argue that Defendants forfeited this argument by 

failing to raise it to the district court. We disagree. Defendants raised this 

argument clearly and distinctly in their objection to Plaintiffs’ second 

request for attorneys’ fees. While the district court appears to have 

disregarded this filing, the argument was nonetheless made and the issue 

was preserved for appeal.

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“maximum rate authorized in statute” according to the 

Congressional Budget Summary’s own description.

We review the district court’s interpretation of the 

Stipulation and the relevant statutes de novo. See P.N. v. 

Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 474 F.3d 1165, 1168 (9th Cir. 2007) 

(“any elements of legal analysis and statutory interpretation 

underlying the district court’s attorneys’ fees decision are 

reviewed de novo”). While we disagree with Defendants that 

the district court erred by consulting the Congressional 

Budget Summary, we hold that the district court erred by 

relying on the $146 figure in the Congressional Budget 

Summary.

As stated above, the Stipulation provides that “the hourly 

rate of attorneys’ fees is governed by 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d).” 

We begin by examining the plain language of that statute, 

which is a component of the Prison Litigation Reform Act 

(PLRA). See Republic of Ecuador v. Mackay, 742 F.3d 860, 

864 (9th Cir. 2014). Section 1997e(d) provides: “No award 

of attorney’s fees . . . shall be based on an hourly rate greater 

than 150 percent of the hourly rate established under section 

3006A of Title 18 for payment of court-appointed counsel.” 

42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d)(3). In other words, Section 1997e(d) 

provides the district court the “authority to award attorney’s 

fees up to 150 percent of the hourly rate for counsel 

established in the Criminal Justice Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3006A.” 

Perez v. Cate, 632 F.3d 553, 555 (9th Cir. 2011).

Section 3006A, in turn, requires that the Judicial 

Conference “develop guidelines for determining the 

maximum hourly rates for each circuit” and authorizes the 

Judicial Conference of the United States to “raise the 

maximum hourly rates . . . at intervals of not less than 1 year 

each,” subject to certain limits not relevant here. See 

18 U.S.C. § 3006A(d)(1). Thus, the relevant question is 

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what source definitively reflects the “raise[s]” authorized by 

the Judicial Conference.

Defendants assert that we must consult the Guide 

because it constitutes the “guidelines of the Judicial 

Conference of the United States for the administration and 

operation of the Criminal Justice Act,”10 and because it 

explicitly sets forth maximum hourly rates.11 Defendants 

also cite four cases from district courts in the Eastern District 

of California and Northern District of California applying 

the rates set forth in the Guide.

However, we previously rejected this argument. See 

Perez, 632 F.3d at 558. In rejecting other prison officials’ 

emphasis on the “direction in 18 U.S.C. § 3006A to develop 

guidelines for determining the maximum hourly rates for 

attorney’s fees,” we explicitly held that these “guidelines are 

not binding on a court tasked with determining the maximum 

allowable hourly rate under the PLRA, because such 

guidelines do not themselves constitute the Judicial 

Conference’s determination of the rate that is justified for a 

circuit or district.” Id. We concluded that the “calculation 

required by the PLRA is not limited by the hourly rates 

10 Defendants quote the website hosting the Criminal Justice Act 

(CJA) Guidelines, https://www.uscourts.gov/rules-policies/judiciarypolicies/criminal-justice-act-cja-guidelines (last visited Jan. 14, 2020).

11 See Guide to Judiciary Policy, Vol 7 Defender Services, Part A 

Guidelines for Administering the CJA and Related Statutes, Chapter 2: 

Appointment and Payment of Counsel § 230.16(a), https://www.uscour

ts.gov/rules-policies/judiciary-policies/cja-guidelines/chapter-2-ss-230-

compensation-and-expenses#a230_16 (last visited Jan. 14, 2020)

(“Except in federal capital prosecutions and in death penalty federal 

habeas corpus proceedings, compensation paid to appointed counsel for 

time expended in court or out of court or before a U.S. magistrate judge 

may not exceed the rates in the following table”).

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suggested by the Judicial Conference” in the Guide. Id.

at 557–58.

Instead, in order to determine the maximum hourly rates 

set by the Judicial Conference, we reviewed the 

Congressional Budget Summary, which revealed that the 

Judicial Conference’s budgetary request to Congress 

incorporated a $113 rate. Id. at 555–56, citing Admin. Office 

of the U.S. Courts, Fiscal Year 2002 Congressional Budget 

Summary 6.13 (Feb. 2001). We also cited the Report of the 

Proceedings of the Judicial Conference of the United States, 

which explained that the Judicial Conference ratified the 

Defender Services Committees’ recommended rate of $113 

and modified its budget request accordingly. Id. at 556 n.1, 

citing Report of the Proceedings of the Judicial Conference 

of the United States (Sept. 19, 2000) at 44–45, 

https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/2000-09.pdf 

(last visited Jan. 14, 2020).

Therefore, Perez instructs us that the relevant rate under 

Section 3006A is the one that the Judicial Conference 

authorized and requested as evidenced by the Congressional 

Budget Summary and the Report of the Proceedings of the 

Judicial Conference of the United States—not what 

Congress ultimately allocated as evidenced by the Guide. 

This instruction is consistent with our conclusion in Webb v. 

Ada County that “the amount actually paid to CJA counsel” 

due to “lack of congressional funding” is irrelevant to the 

rate determination under Section 3006A. 285 F.3d 829, 839 

(9th Cir. 2002). It is also consistent with the conclusion of 

our sister circuit that, because Section 3006A “contains no 

reference to congressional appropriations,” the “language of 

the statute indicates that Congress intended the PLRA rate to 

be determined by the Judicial Conference” alone. Hadix v. 

Johnson, 398 F.3d 863, 867–68 (6th Cir. 2005); see also id.

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PARSONS V. RYAN 37

(“the maximum allowable attorney fees under the PLRA 

should be based on the amount authorized by the Judicial 

Conference, not the amount actually paid to court-appointed 

counsel under the CJA”).

In light of this precedent, we hold that the “hourly rate 

established under section 3006A” within the meaning of 

42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d)(3) is the amount the Judicial 

Conference authorized and requested from Congress. We 

further hold that the district court did not err in consulting 

the Congressional Budget Summary to derive this rate.12

However, the district court’s selection of $146 as the 

relevant rate within the Congressional Budget Summary 

merits further scrutiny. The Congressional Budget Summary 

for Fiscal Year 2017 provides:

The requested funding supports a $6 hourly 

rate increase above inflation from $131 to 

$137 per hour for non-capital cases in FY 

2017 (the maximum rate authorized in statute 

is $146 per hour). The judiciary assumes that 

there will be a $2 cost-of living adjustment in 

FY 2017, raising the CJA base rate from $129 

per hour to $131 per hour for FY 2017. The 

$6 rate increase is needed to ensure that 

courts retain and recruit qualified and 

experienced criminal defense practitioners 

12 The other source we consulted in Perez—the Report of the 

Proceedings of the Judicial Conference of the United States—is silent as 

to what rate the Judicial Conference authorized and requested for Fiscal 

Year 2017. See Report of the Proceedings of the Judicial Conference of 

the United States (Sept. 17, 2015), https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/

files/2015-09-17_0.pdf.

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38 PARSONS V. RYAN

for their CJA panels. The annualized cost of 

this increase is $15.1 million.

Following Perez, we conclude that the $146 base rate 

employed by the district court is incorrect because it merely 

represents the “maximum rate authorized in statute”—not 

the amount authorized and requested by the Judicial 

Conference. Instead, the correct CJA panel rate here is $137 

per hour for Fiscal Year 2017, 150% of which is $205.50 per 

hour.

We vacate the Attorneys’ Fees Order and remand to the 

district court with instructions to recalculate the fee award 

consistent with this Opinion by determining the correct rates 

for each year and applying these rates to Plaintiffs’ timeentries. As we explained above, however, the district court 

should exclude from any fee award the 11 hours erroneously 

included, see fn. 8, supra. Finally, we agree with the parties 

that the district court should modify the costs award down 

by $1,285.79 in light of the district court’s failure to reflect 

the downward adjustments in its prior order.

3.

Defendants next argue that the district court erred by 

setting the paralegal rate at $219 per hour (the amount the 

district court determined to be the maximum rate under the 

PLRA) for paralegal work performed in the San Francisco 

Bay Area, and at $160 per hour for paralegal work 

performed in Washington, D.C. According to Defendants, 

the district court should have applied a $125 rate—the rate 

for paralegal work in Phoenix, Arizona—for all paralegal 

work even though Plaintiffs’ paralegals actually worked in 

the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington D.C.

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PARSONS V. RYAN 39

We reject Defendants’ argument that the district court 

erred in applying Bay Area and D.C. paralegal market rates 

and instead of the market rate in Phoenix. “[R]ates, other 

than those of the forum, may be employed if local counsel 

was unavailable, either because they are unwilling or unable 

to perform because they lack the degree of experience, 

expertise, or specialization required to handle properly the 

case.” Gates v. Deukmejian, 987 F.2d 1392, 1405 (9th Cir. 

1992). Plaintiffs have submitted uncontroverted evidence 

regarding the unavailability of local counsel to handle 

complicated and low-paying prison cases such as this one. 

There is thus a factual and legal basis for the district court to 

award fees based on rates outside Phoenix.13

We also reject Defendants’ challenge to the district 

court’s assignment of the PLRA maximum rate to the 

paralegal work performed in the San Francisco Bay Area. As 

we explained in Perez, paralegals are entitled to the PLRA’s 

maximum hourly rate if the paralegal market rate exceeds 

that cap. 632 F.3d at 557. Defendants do not contest 

Plaintiffs’ evidence indicating that the prevailing market rate 

for paralegal work was $250 per hour in the San Francisco 

Bay Area—which exceeds the PLRA rate. Accordingly, 

district court did not err in applying the PLRA maximum rate 

to the paralegal work performed in the San Francisco Bay 

Area.

However, as we explained above, the correct maximum 

rate is the amount the Judicial Conference authorized and 

13 Defendants assert that local counsel must have been available 

because local law firms are co-counsel for Plaintiffs. However, the 

availability of local counsel to handle ancillary matters like meeting with 

clients and touring prisons does not imply that such counsel could have 

handled the case in its entirety. See Gates, 987 F.2d at 1405.

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requested from Congress, which can be found in the 

Congressional Budget Summary. See Section IV.A.2, supra. 

The 2017 maximum rate is $205.50 per hour, id.—not $219. 

Accordingly, we reverse and remand with instructions for 

the district court to re-calculate the fees awarded for 

paralegal work in light of the correct rates.

4.

Finally, Defendants argue that the district court erred by 

enhancing the fee award with a double multiplier. 

Defendants contend that the Stipulation does not allow for a 

multiplier, the PLRA does not allow for a multiplier, and, 

even if a multiplier were permissible, the district court 

abused its discretion by concluding one was appropriate 

here. We reject Defendants’ first two contentions, but agree 

with the last.

The Stipulation explicitly incorporates the PLRA’s rules 

for determining “reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs,” 

because it provides that the hourly rate is “governed by 

42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d)”—which codifies the PLRA. The 

PLRA, in turn, authorizes multipliers to the base hourly rate 

above the cap set by 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d)(1). See Kelly v. 

Wengler, 822 F.3d 1085, 1100 (9th Cir. 2016).14

14 Defendants argue that we should overrule Kelly because it is 

inconsistent with intervening Supreme Court decision Murphy v. Smith, 

138 S. Ct. 784 (2018). Under the law of this circuit, panel decisions are 

binding on future panels unless the Supreme Court (or our en banc court) 

has “undercut the theory or reasoning underlying the prior circuit 

precedent in such a way that the cases are clearly irreconcilable.” Miller 

v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889, 900 (9th Cir. 2003) (en banc). That is not the 

case here. Murphy concerned only the interpretation of 42 U.S.C. 

§ 1997e(d)(2), and it did not disapprove the lodestar method or fee 

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PARSONS V. RYAN 41

However, the district court abused its discretion by 

enhancing the fee award. “A strong presumption exists that 

the lodestar figure represents a reasonable fee,” and the 

district court must “decide whether to enhance or reduce the 

lodestar figure based on an evaluation” of the factors listed 

in Kerr v. Screen Extras Guild, Inc., 526 F.2d 67 (9th Cir. 

1975), “that are not already subsumed in the initial lodestar 

calculation.” Fischer v. SJB-P.D. Inc., 214 F.3d 1115, 1119 

& n.4 (9th Cir. 2000) (citations and internal quotation marks 

omitted). “[A]ny reliance on factors that have been held to 

be subsumed in the lodestar determination will be considered 

an abuse of the trial court’s discretion.” Cunningham v. Cty. 

of Los Angeles, 879 F.2d 481, 487 (9th Cir. 1988).

The district court violated this rule when it decided to 

“evaluate the applicability of all the Kerr factors to 

determine whether an enhancement is appropriate.” The 

district court reasoned that it could do so because “there is 

no true lodestar analysis here” in light of the fact that the 

“Stipulation set the hourly rate . . . .” This was error because 

the Stipulation applies the PLRA rate, which already 

“subsumes the [Kerr] factors relevant to the determination 

of a reasonable attorney’s fee, including the novelty and 

complexity of the case and the quality of the attorney’s 

performance.” Kelly, 822 F.3d at 1103. Accordingly, the 

district court’s reliance on several of the Kerr factors to 

justify an enhancement effectively double-counted certain 

factors and constituted an abuse of discretion. See 

Cunningham, 879 F.2d at 487.

enhancements in any way, despite explicitly discussing both the overall 

“surrounding statutory structure of § 1997e(d)” and the lodestar method 

in particular. See 138 S. Ct. at 789–90.

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We therefore vacate the Attorneys’ Fees Order and 

remand for the district court to reweigh whether an 

enhancement was appropriate.

B.

Plaintiffs’ sole argument on cross-appeal is that the 

district court misinterpreted the law by denying Plaintiffs 

compensation for law clerk time, which, Plaintiffs assert, is 

reimbursable.

As a legal matter, Plaintiffs are correct that 

compensation for unpaid law clerks is permissible under 

42 U.S.C. § 1988. See Missouri v. Jenkins ex rel. Agyei, 

491 U.S. 274, 286 (1989) (rejecting argument that award 

“should be based on cost” and instead should be “calculated 

according to the prevailing market rates” (internal quotation 

marks and citations omitted)); see also, e.g., Rosenfeld v. 

U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 904 F. Supp. 2d 988, 1006 (N.D. Cal. 

2012) (“That those law students and interns worked without 

pay is of no consequence so long as the rates for which their 

work was billed is ‘consistent with market rates and 

practices.’” (quoting Jenkins, 491 U.S. at 286)). Plaintiffs 

are also correct that Section 1988 is applicable here because 

the Stipulation provides that “the hourly rate of attorneys’ 

fees is governed by 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d),” and that statute, 

in turn, authorizes fees under Section 1988. See 42 U.S.C. 

§ 1997e(d)(1).

However, Plaintiffs incorrectly assume that the district 

court ruled that it could not award compensation for unpaid 

law clerk time, when it actually ruled that it would not. The 

relevant language from the district court’s decision provides: 

“The Court will not authorize reimbursement for a cost 

without any evidence that a cost was, in fact, incurred.”

Although Plaintiffs assume that this language reflects legal 

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PARSONS V. RYAN 43

error, the better interpretation of the district court’s order is 

that the district court believed it was unreasonable to award 

fees for law clerk time when Plaintiffs’ law clerks were not 

paid. Plaintiffs have not provided any arguments for why this 

determination was so unreasonable as to be an abuse of 

discretion. Cf. Blackburn v. Goettel-Blanton, 898 F.2d 95, 

97 (9th Cir. 1990) (“We review the reasonableness of the 

district court’s award of fees for abuse of discretion”). We 

therefore consider the argument waived. See Edwards v. 

Marin Park, Inc., 356 F.3d 1058, 1066 (9th Cir. 2004) 

(“[W]e ordinarily will not consider matters on appeal that are 

not specifically and distinctly argued in an appellant’s 

opening brief” (alteration in original) (citation omitted)). 

Accordingly, Plaintiffs’ cross-appeal is denied.

V.

We turn now to the Medical Needs Appeal, in which 

Defendants appeal from (A) the Termination Order, (B) the 

HNR-Box Order, and (C) seven orders concerning courtappointed experts tasked with assisting the district court in 

enforcing the Stipulation (collectively, the Expert Orders).15

For the reasons set forth below, we affirm the Termination 

Order and the HNR-Box Order, and dismiss the Expert 

Orders for lack of jurisdiction.

A.

The Stipulation provides, in relevant part, that 

Defendants’ “duty to measure and report on a particular 

performance measure . . . terminates if” two conditions are 

15 The Expert Orders are comprised of the Millar-Plan Order, the 

Millar-Appointment Order, the Compliance-Expert Order, the SternAppointment Order, the Stern-Terms of Engagement Order, the SternStandard of Care Order, and the Abplanalp-Appointment Order.

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satisfied. First, the “particular performance measure that 

applies to a specific complex” must be “in compliance” for 

“eighteen months out of a twenty-four month period.”

Second, the “particular performance measure” to be 

terminated must not have “been out of compliance” for 

“three or more consecutive months within the past 18-month 

period.” Otherwise, Defendants’ “duty to measure and report 

on any performance measure for a given complex shall 

continue for the life of this Stipulation . . . .”

On August 25, 2017, Defendants filed a motion to 

terminate the monitoring of certain Performance Measures. 

On June 22, 2018 the district court issued the Termination 

Order, in which it granted Defendants’ motion in part, and 

ordered the parties to submit names of proposed Rule 706 

experts to review the monitoring process.

The district court denied Defendants’ request to 

terminate certain Performance Measures on two independent 

grounds. First, the district court interpreted the Stipulation to 

require compliance—as measured by specific reporting 

procedures it previously ordered—in 18 of the 24 months 

preceding Defendants’ motion to terminate. The district 

court determined that some of the Performance Measures 

failed under these criteria.

Second, the district court determined that Defendants’ 

monitoring system was unreliable and held that it could not 

terminate monitoring of Performance Measures “without 

confirmation that a compliant CGAR16 is a valid, reliable, 

and accurate indicator that Defendants have provided Class 

16 “CGAR” (short for “Compliance Green Amber Red”) is used to 

evaluate and report Defendants’ monthly performance on the 

Performance Measures in the Stipulation.

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PARSONS V. RYAN 45

Members the care required by the Stipulation.” The district 

court evaluated Defendants’ data integrity and determined 

that it “cannot be confident that the CGARs demonstrate 

compliance with the Stipulation” because “there are 

profound and systemic concerns with the monitoring process 

at every stage of the process.”

Defendants argue that the Termination Order should be 

vacated for three reasons.17 We discuss each argument in 

turn.

1.

We begin with Defendants’ argument that the district 

court erred by finding that ADC’s monitoring system was 

unreliable. Defendants argue that the district court erred in 

finding system-wide unreliability based on supposedly 

isolated incidents by challenging several of the district 

court’s inferences from the testimony presented in 

evidentiary hearings and citing additional evidence that the 

district court declined to credit.18

17 Additionally, in their opening brief, Defendants originally argued

that no termination motion was required, but abandoned that argument 

in their reply.

18 Defendants also cursorily argue that Plaintiffs should have been

estopped from raising their challenges about Defendants’ monitoring 

when they did before the district court. However, Defendants provide no 

analysis of why Plaintiffs should have been estopped or what type of 

estoppel should have applied, nor did they do so in the district court. This 

argument is therefore forfeited. See Greenwood, 28 F.3d at 977 (“We 

will not manufacture arguments for an appellant, and a bare assertion 

does not preserve a claim, particularly when, as here, a host of other 

issues are presented for review”).

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Because Defendants challenge the factual findings of the 

district court, to which we defer unless they are clearly 

erroneous, Parsons I, 912 F.3d at 495, Defendants must 

show that the findings are “illogical, implausible, or without 

support in inferences that may be drawn from the record.”

United States v. Hinkson, 585 F.3d 1247, 1263 (9th Cir. 

2009) (en banc). Defendants have failed to meet this heavy 

burden.

Defendants list several instances where they disagree 

with the inferences the district court drew from the examples 

it provided. However, Defendants do not argue that any of 

the examples cited by the district court did not factually 

occur. “Where more than one inference can be drawn from 

the evidence presented, the inference relied upon by the 

district court will not be set aside unless unreasonable as a 

matter of law.” Fenton v. Freedman, 748 F.2d 1358, 1361 

(9th Cir. 1984). Because Defendants failed to establish that 

the district court’s inferences that Defendants failed to 

demonstrate the integrity of its CGAR scores were illogical, 

implausible, or without support, we conclude that those 

findings are not clearly erroneous.

2.

Defendants also challenge the district court’s legal 

interpretation of the Stipulation, arguing that, contrary to the 

district court’s decision, the Stipulation does not require 

compliance in 18 of the 24 months preceding Defendants’ 

motion to terminate and does not require monitoring to 

comply with the “Final Monitoring Guide.”

Even if these interpretations were erroneous, however, 

such error would have been harmless because both of these 

supposed errors only related to the first of the two 

independently-sufficient grounds for the district court’s 

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PARSONS V. RYAN 47

decision to deny the termination of the Performance 

Measures. As we explained above, the district court’s second 

ground adequately supports its decision not to terminate 

monitoring. As such, these alleged interpretive errors do not 

justify vacating the Termination Order.

3.

Defendants also argue that the district court exceeded its 

authority in appointing Dr. Stern to investigate ADC’s 

monitoring program. This argument is factually challenged: 

at the time of the Termination Order Dr. Stern had not been 

appointed; the district court only ordered the parties to 

submit the names of proposed experts. Simply put, there is 

no basis for reversing the Termination Order—which dealt 

almost exclusively with interpreting the Stipulation and 

making findings of fact about the reliability of ADC’s 

monitoring—based on the appointment of an expert five 

months later. Accordingly, we reject Defendants’ last 

argument and affirm the Termination Order.

B.

When the Stipulation was entered into, healthcare was 

provided through an “HNR-Box” system, where prisoners 

placed health needs request forms into designated boxes, 

nursing staff triaged the forms, and prisoners were provided 

care based on the requests. After entering the Stipulation, 

ADC discontinued the HNR-Box system and transitioned to 

an “Open-Clinic” system, where prisoners would bring 

completed health needs request forms to a health unit and be 

seen on a first-come, first-served basis. After ADC notified 

Plaintiffs’ counsel about this change, Plaintiffs objected to 

ADC’s discontinuation of the HNR-Box System.

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48 PARSONS V. RYAN

Ultimately, the district court issued the HNR-Box Order, 

in which it ordered Defendants to reinstall HNR boxes in the 

same number and approximate locations as before the HNRBox system was discontinued. The district court ruled that, 

“[b]ecause the parties identified the HNR boxes as the 

triggering event with some of the performance measures, 

this practice cannot be abandoned without proof that it 

would have no effect on the measurement of Defendants’ 

compliance with the Stipulation.” The district court found 

that “HNRs are now only tracked when an inmate sees a 

health care provider” and that ADC “does not have any 

mechanism to track inmates who attempted to attend an open 

clinic and does not log when inmates arrived at the open 

clinic.” Accordingly, the district court concluded that the 

Open-Clinic system could “impermissibly constrict the 

numbers of HNRs submitted for measurement and so [ADC] 

cannot replace the HNR Boxes for purposes of measuring 

compliance with the Stipulation.” The district court 

permitted ADC to continue using the Open-Clinic process in 

tandem with the HNR-Box System, if it wished.

Defendants argue that the district court erred by ordering 

them to resume the HNR-Box System for three reasons.

1.

Defendants first argue that the district court exceeded its 

remedial authority under the Stipulation by ordering ADC to 

resume the HNR-Box system because the Stipulation does 

not require Defendants to collect health needs request forms 

in any particular manner. We disagree.

The Stipulation grants the district court the power to 

enforce non-compliance through “all remedies provided by 

law.” To come within this enforcement authority, the district 

court’s order must be (1) a remedy recognized by the law, 

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PARSONS V. RYAN 49

and (2) consistent with the remainder of the Stipulation. 

Parsons I, 912 F.3d at 497–98. Both requirements are met 

here. First, the HNR-Box Order is a recognized remedy—an 

injunction. We have previously upheld the power of the 

district court to issue injunctions in this case. See Parsons I, 

912 F.3d at 499–501 (upholding the OPO, which required 

Defendants to “use all available community healthcare 

services” to ensure compliance with certain Performance 

Measures). Second, the HNR-Box Order is consistent with 

the remainder of the Stipulation.

Although the Stipulation does not specifically define the 

way health-needs request forms must be collected, the only 

fair reading of the Stipulation is that the HNR-Box system 

was a mutually understood assumption on which the contract 

was based. See, e.g., Stip. ¶ 13 (“Defendants . . . will . . . 

train dental assistants at ADC facilities about how to triage 

HNRs into routine or urgent care lines”); Exh. B, 

Performance Measure #36 (“A LPN or RN will screen HNRs 

within 24 hours of receipt”); Exh. B, Performance Measure

#37 (“Sick call inmates will be seen by an RN within 24 

hours after an HNR is received”); Exh. B, Performance 

Measure # 98 (“Mental health HNRs shall be responded to 

within the timeframes set forth in the Mental Health 

Technical Manual”); Exh. B, Performance Measure #102

(“Routine dental health care wait times will be no more than 

90 days from the date the HNR was received”); Exh. B, 

Performance Measure #103 (“Urgent dental care wait times, 

as determined by the contracted vendor, shall be no more 

than 72 hours from the date the HNR was received”).

We conclude the district court did not err by determining 

it could enforce the Stipulation to comply with that mutual 

understanding. See Bryceland, 772 P.2d 36, 39 (“We will 

interpret a contract in a manner which gives a reasonable 

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50 PARSONS V. RYAN

meaning to the manifested intent of the parties rather than an 

interpretation that would render the contract 

unreasonable”).19

2.

Defendants next argue that the district court improperly 

placed the burden of proof on Defendants to show that the 

Open-Clinic system did not affect compliance-monitoring.

Defendants contend that the Stipulation places the burden of 

proving non-compliance on Plaintiffs, and thus Defendants 

should not have been forced to prove their own compliance. 

Plaintiffs argue that it was reasonable to place the burden on 

Defendants because they changed the status quo by 

eliminating the HNR-Box system, and that if there was error, 

it was harmless in light of the district court’s findings.

We agree that the district court erred by placing the 

burden of proof on Defendants. The Stipulation 

contemplates the activation of the district court’s remedial 

powers only after a motion to enforce, and in this case, 

Plaintiffs were the ones who sought to enforce the 

Stipulation by moving the court for the HNR-Box Order. 

Plaintiffs have not provided a persuasive reason why we 

should deviate from the general axiom that “the burden of 

proof rests with the moving party,” McDonald v. Harding, 

57 F.2d 119, 124 (9th Cir. 1932). Thus, we hold that the 

burden of proof properly rested with Plaintiffs as the party 

seeking to demonstrate Defendants’ non-compliance.

19 We also reject Defendants’ arguments concerning deference to 

prison administrators: the district court afforded any deference due when 

it enabled ADC to continue the “open-clinic” system alongside the HNRBox system (which ADC had previously employed for years).

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Nevertheless, we conclude that the district court’s legal 

error was harmless. As we discussed in the previous section, 

the issue here is whether the district court could order 

Defendants to resume the HNR-Box system. The district 

court correctly determined that it could so order “[b]ecause 

the parties identified the HNR boxes as the triggering event 

with some of the performance measures.” The district court 

then supported that determination by finding that “the 

modified open clinic HNR process may impermissibly 

constrict the numbers of HNRs submitted for measurement.” 

That factual finding is unchallenged by Defendants on 

appeal and is sufficient to support the district court’s order 

regardless of which party had the burden of proof regarding 

compliance.

3.

Finally, Defendants take issue with a portion of the 

HNR-Box Order, in which the district court found “it is 

likely that some class members would not be able to brave 

the gauntlet of making it to a nurse at the open clinic.” 

Defendants contend that this factual finding is clearly 

erroneous.

However, even assuming that this statement was clearly 

erroneous, such error was harmless. The complete sentence 

reads: “Not only have Defendants failed to meet this burden 

of proof but the Court is satisfied that it is likely that some 

class members would not be able to brave the gauntlet of 

making it to a nurse at the open clinic.” We conclude that 

this statement was an aside in the HNR-Box Order and did 

not factor into the legal issue of whether the Stipulation 

permitted Defendants to abandon the HNR-Box system.

Accordingly, we reject Defendants’ last argument and 

affirm the HNR-Box Order.

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52 PARSONS V. RYAN

C.

We now turn to Defendants’ appeals from the seven 

Expert Orders. For the reasons below, we conclude that we 

lack jurisdiction over the Expert Orders and dismiss the 

Medical Needs Appeal to the extent it pertains to those 

orders.

We generally have jurisdiction only over final decisions 

of the district courts. See 28 U.S.C. § 1291. A “final 

decision” is typically “one which ends the litigation on the 

merits and leaves nothing for the court to do but execute the 

judgment.” United States v. Washington, 761 F.2d 1404, 

1406 (9th Cir. 1985) (citation omitted). In this postsettlement case, there is no final judgment from which to 

appeal. However, this panel previously held that it had 

jurisdiction to review the certain enforcement orders 

pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 under the collateral order 

doctrine. Parsons I, 912 F.3d at 502–03.

As we explained in Parsons I, an “order that does not 

strictly end the litigation may nonetheless be considered 

sufficiently final when it is ‘too important to be denied 

review and too independent of the merits of the case to 

require deferral of review.’” 912 F.3d at 502, quoting Plata 

v. Brown, 754 F.3d 1070, 1075 (9th Cir. 2014). “To warrant 

review under the collateral order doctrine, the order must 

‘(1) conclusively determine the disputed question, 

(2) resolve an important issue completely separate from the 

merits of the action, and (3) be effectively unreviewable on 

appeal from a final judgment.’” Id. at 502. None of the 

Expert Orders satisfy these criteria.

In five of the Expert Orders—the Millar-Appointment 

Order, the Stern-Appointment Order, the AbplanalpAppointment Order, the Stern-Standard of Care Order, and 

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PARSONS V. RYAN 53

the Stern-Terms of Engagement Order—the district court 

merely appointed experts and clarified the scope of those 

experts’ duties. The issues presented in appointing, and 

assigning duties to, experts are not “effectively 

unreviewable,” id., because Defendants will be able to raise 

any issues regarding their findings, testimony, or 

recommendations in an appeal from a subsequent order 

relying on those findings or implementing those 

recommendations (if and when such an order is issued). 

Accordingly, these orders are neither final orders nor 

appealable collateral orders.

In the Compliance-Expert Order, the district court 

required the parties to submit briefing regarding what 

procedures were necessary to compel compliance with the 

Stipulation. Similarly, in the Millar-Plan Order, the district 

court required Defendants to file a plan to implement the 

recommendations made by an expert.

We lack jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 over these 

orders because they do not qualify as either a final order or 

an appealable collateral order. An order requiring a prison to 

submit a plan is not a final order under § 1291. See Balla v. 

Idaho State Bd. of Corrs., 869 F.2d 461, 464–65 (9th Cir. 

1989) (joining other courts of appeals in holding that orders 

requiring the “submission of detailed plans are not final 

orders appealable under 28 U.S.C. § 1291”). Moreover, 

Defendants will be able to raise any issues regarding any 

operational modifications in an appeal from the district 

court’s implementation order (if and when one is issued). 

Thus, the issues raised here are not “effectively 

unreviewable,” and the collateral order doctrine does not 

apply. See Parsons I, 912 F.3d at 502.

We also lack jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1292 

because an “order requiring submission of a remedial plan is 

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54 PARSONS V. RYAN

generally not an injunction reviewable interlocutorily under 

§ 1292(a)(1).” Armstrong v. Wilson, 124 F.3d 1019, 1021–

22 (9th Cir. 1997). There is a narrow exception for timely 

appeals that pose a “purely legal question,” such as when 

“the order sufficiently specifies the content of the plan to be 

submitted,” or when “the exact specifications of the plan 

would not alter in a material manner the issues that would be 

presented to the court of appeals.” Id. (internal quotation 

marks and citations omitted).

Here, however, neither order “specifies the content of the 

plan to be submitted” such that the “content and scope of the 

remedial scheme” is “sufficiently clear to enable appellate 

review” concerning the issues Defendants raise. Id. at 1022. 

The district court has not yet ordered the appointment of a 

specific type and number of staff, nor did it order Defendants 

to submit a plan that adopts verbatim an expert’s specific 

staffing recommendations. Without knowing how, or 

whether, the district court will do so in the future, “important 

issues regarding the nature and extent of the relief still 

remain to be resolved and are dependent on the particular 

circumstances of the case as it w[ill] develop in the 

proceedings subsequent to the entry of the order.” Id.

(alteration and citation omitted). Accordingly, Defendants’ 

appeal of these orders is premature and we lack jurisdiction 

over it.

Consistent with our “strong policy against piecemeal 

appeals,” we conclude that we lack jurisdiction over 

Defendants’ Medical Needs Appeal to the extent it concerns 

the Expert Orders. See Citibank, N.A. v. Oxford Properties 

& Fin. Ltd., 688 F.2d 1259, 1261 (9th Cir. 1982). 

Accordingly, we cannot address the merits of Defendants’ 

arguments concerning propriety of any of these orders at this 

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PARSONS V. RYAN 55

juncture and must dismiss the appeal to the extent it concerns 

those orders.

VI.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the Contempt 

Order, the Termination Order, and the HNR-Box Order; we

vacate the Attorneys’ Fees Order and Judgement, and 

remand with instructions to (a) recalculate the fee award by 

determining the correct hourly rates for each year consistent 

with the process outlined in this Opinion, (b) exclude from 

any fee award the 11 hours erroneously included; (c) modify 

the costs award down by $1,285.79 in light of the district 

court’s failure to reflect the downward adjustments in its 

prior order; and (d) reweigh whether a fee enhancement was 

appropriate without double-counting the Kerr factors. The 

remainder of the Medical Needs Appeal is dismissed for lack 

of jurisdiction.

The parties shall bear their own costs on appeal. Any 

pending motions are DENIED.

AFFIRMED in part, REVERSED in part, 

DISMISSED in part, and REMANDED.

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