Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caed-2_01-cv-02407/USCOURTS-caed-2_01-cv-02407-6/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 850
Nature of Suit: Securities, Commodities, Exchange
Cause of Action: 28:1983 Civil Rights

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1

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

----oo0oo----

CHRIS LUSBY TAYLOR, NANCY A.

PEPPLE-GONSAVLES, GARY

KESSELMAN, SUSAN SWINTON, DAWN

E. STRUCK, and WILLIAM J.

PALMER, as taxpayers, and on

behalf of themselves and other

persons similarly situated,

 NO. CIV. S-01-2407 WBS GGH

Plaintiffs,

v.

ORDER RE: MOTION FOR INTERIM

FEE AWARD

JOHN CHIANG, in his capacity

as CONTROLLER OF THE STATE OF

CALIFORNIA, and STEVE WESTLY, 

individually,

Defendants.

----oo0oo----

Plaintiffs move for an interim award of attorneys’ fees

Case 2:01-cv-02407-JAM-GGH Document 148 Filed 10/31/07 Page 1 of 8
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1 This motion was filed on September 18, 2007. Though

plaintiffs have since filed a notice of appeal on separate

aspects of the same underlying action, (Docket No. 135.), the

instant motion remains within the jurisdiction of the district

court. See Marrese v. Am. Acad. of Orthopaedic Surgeons, 470

U.S. 373, 379 (1985) (citing Griggs v. Provident Consumer Disc.

Co., 459 U.S. 56, 58 (1982) (per curiam)) (“[F]iling of a notice

of appeal confers jurisdiction on the court of appeals and

divests the district court of control over those aspects of the

case involved in the appeal.”) (emphasis added).

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and costs pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988.1 The motion will be

denied for two reasons: first, the court does not find that

plaintiffs are “prevailing parties” at this time; second, even if

plaintiffs were found to be prevailing parties, the court would

not exercise its discretion at this time to award interim fees. 

Discussion

A “court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing

party . . . a reasonable attorney’s fee as part of the costs.” 

42 U.S.C. § 1988(b). The United States Supreme Court has held

that this discretion includes the ability to award fees while the

action is pending, but “only when a party has prevailed on the

merits of at least some of [its] claims.” Hanrahan v. Hampton,

446 U.S. 754, 757-58 (1980). 

A. Prevailing Party

A litigant is deemed a “prevailing party” for purposes

of awarding an interim fee award when he has obtained a judgment

on the merits, a settlement agreement enforced through a consent

decree, or some other “judicially sanctioned change in the legal

relationship of the parties.” Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home, Inc.

v. West Virginia Dept. of Health and Human Res., 532 U.S. 598,

605 (2001). Plaintiffs argue that the preliminary injunction

effectively induced a judicially sanctioned change in the legal

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2 Tellingly, plaintiffs implicitly negate their argument

that they are prevailing parties by continuing to claim that even

the amended provisions violate due process. (Docket No. 135)

(plaintiffs’ notice of appeal from this court’s October 17, 2007

Order dissolving preliminary injunction); see also Texas State

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relationship between themselves and defendants, and therefore

they have obtained final success at an interlocutory stage of the

litigation.

However, the United States Supreme Court has explicitly

denied awarding interim fees that stem from voluntary action on

behalf of the government. See Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 600, 621

(holding that “prevailing party” in fee-shifting provisions does

not “includ[e] a party that has failed to secure a judgment on

the merits or a court-ordered consent decree, but has nonetheless

achieved the desired result because the lawsuit brought about a

voluntary change in the defendant’s conduct.”); Mantolete v.

Bolger, 791 F.2d 784, 786 (9th Cir. 1986) (upholding fee award

only where decision imposes “specific, affirmative obligations”

on government to comply with court orders as opposed to

permitting voluntary action).

Here, the preliminary injunction did not affirmatively

direct defendants to undertake specific steps or procedures, but

instead allowed the California state legislature to voluntarily

amend their notice provisions in a manner that “provid[es] fair

notice to the owner and public.” (June 1, 2007 Order 11: 2-10.) 

The eventual choice to amend the notice provisions was one of

several options available to defendants, who could have chosen to

proceed to a full trial on the merits or strike the notice

provisions altogether.2

 Accordingly, denoting plaintiffs as

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Teachers Ass’n v. Garland Indep. Sch. Dist., 489 U.S. 782, 792

(1989) (“At a minimum, to be considered a prevailing party within

the meaning of § 1988, the plaintiff must be able to point to the

resolution of a dispute which changes the legal relationship

between itself and the defendant.”) (emphasis added). 

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prevailing parties at this stage of the litigation appears

premature.

B. Discretion to Award Interim Fees

Even if plaintiffs were to qualify as prevailing

parties, the court would not exercise its discretion to award

interim attorneys fees under 41 U.S.C. § 1988. While the Ninth

Circuit has not directly addressed the issue of what

considerations should guide a court in exercising its discretion

to award interim fees, courts may seek guidance from cases

construing other statutes allowing for an award of attorney’s

fees. See Mantolete, 791 F.2d at 785-86 (examining other

statutes with fee award provisions for assistance in discerning a

similar provision under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973); Hall v.

Bolger, 768 F.2d 1148, 1151 (9th Cir. 1985) (same). 

Policies underlying the enactment of fee award

provisions include facilitating citizen access to the courts by

providing counsel with an incentive to take cases and

discouraging government delaying tactics. Powell v. U.S. Dept.

of Justice, 569 F. Supp. 1192, 1200 (N.D. Cal. 1983). In light

of these purposes, the court should consider the degree of

hardship which delaying a fee award until the litigation is

finally concluded would work on plaintiff and his or her counsel,

Bradley v. Richmond School Bd., 416 U.S. 696, 723 (1974), and

whether there is unreasonable delay or use of illegitimate

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3 Plaintiffs’ submissions supporting their fee requests

are riddled with inconsistencies, excessive compensation, and

improper billing. For instance, plaintiffs now request fees

related to their two appeals, but the Ninth Circuit has held that

parties must seek their fees for appellate work in the Ninth

Circuit, or file a timely motion with the Ninth Circuit to

transfer consideration of the issue to the District Court.

Cummings v. Connell, 402 F.3d 936, 947-48 (9th Cir. 2005) (citing

Ninth Circuit Rules 39-1.6 & 39-1.8). 

Further, plaintiffs’ list administrative activities

such as arranging travel, copying and serving documents,

organizing files, and creating hearing binders under attorneys’

rates and thus seemingly billed at $350 to $400 an hour. See

Trustees of Constr. Indus. & Laborers’ Health & Welfare Trust v.

Redland Ins. Co., 460 F.3d 1253, 1257 (9th Cir. 2006)

(secretarial work is compensable at the market rate for those

services, and only if it is customary to bill separately for such

services in their legal market); see also Lipsett v. Blanco, 975

F.2d 934, 940 (1st Cir. 1992) (“[C]lerical or secretarial tasks

ought not to be billed at lawyers’ rates, even if a lawyer

performs them.”). 

Also listed on the time sheets are billings for various

interactions with the media, fees which the Ninth Circuit has

held should not be awarded because “media contact” is the kind of

activity “that attorneys generally do at their own expense.” 

Gates v. Gomez, 60 F.3d 525, 535 (9th Cir. 1995); see also Agster

v. Maricopa County, 486 F. Supp. 2d 1005, 1016 (D. Ariz. 2007)

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tactics on the government’s part. Powell, 569 F. Supp. at 2000.

1. Degree of Hardship

Plaintiffs have not persuaded the court that a

significant degree of hardship would result from denial of an

interim fee award. Outside of a blanket statement asserting

“that the litigation has consumed enormous amounts of plaintiffs’

counsel resources, thus creating a significant financial hardship

for their counsel,” (Pls.’ Mem. in Supp. of Mot. for Att’ys Fees

10: 26-28.), plaintiffs provide little proof of actual hardship. 

Instead, in this case where there has not been any discovery

taken--not a single deposition or interrogatory--much less any

evidentiary hearing or trial on the merits, plaintiffs offer an

inadequate set of documents3 in support of their request for

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(“[A]n award of attorneys’ fees should not include amounts for

contact with the media.”). In addition, the submitted time

sheets include entries with short-hand descriptions like “Legal

Research” and “Emails from and to associates.” See Wininger v.

SI Management L.P., 301 F.3d 1115, 1126 (9th Cir. 2002)

(asserting that such brevity “patently fall[s] short of the

requirement” that “[t]he party petitioning for attorneys’ fees

bears the burden of submitting detailed time records justifying

the hours claimed to have been expended”). 

Finally, the time sheets make it nearly impossible to

delineate the respective contributions from individual lawyers in

their representation of plaintiffs. Instead, entries of the

various lawyers’ “contributions” repeatedly appear side by side

with almost identical descriptions of the time spent, creating an

appearance of duplicative hours that may necessitate fee

reductions. See Jones v. Wild Oats Markets, Inc., 467 F. Supp.

2d 1004, 1015 (S.D. Cal. 2006) (noting that reduced fee awards

may be warranted where the record fails to “reflect[] the

distinct contribution of each lawyer to the case”). 

4 Limiting fee awards according to the degree of success

is particularly important in complex civil rights litigation like

the instant action because they involve numerous challenges to

institutional practices or conditions. Hensley, 462 U.S. at 436. 

These cases are notoriously long and time consuming, and even if

plaintiffs succeed in identifying some unlawful practices, “the

range of possible success is vast. That the party is a

‘prevailing party’ therefore may say little about whether the

expenditure of counsel’s time was reasonable in relation to the

success achieved.” Id.

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compensation for an astonishing 6,947.2 hours of attorney time at

rates of $400 and $350 per hour.

Plaintiffs have made no credible showing of what

portion of the claimed time was spent in the prosecution of the

claim upon which they claim to have prevailed. If a plaintiff

prevails on one claim but not another claim “that is distinct in

all respects from his successful claims, the hours spent on the

unsuccessful claim should be excluded in considering the amount

of a reasonable fee.” Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 440

(1983).4

 Here, plaintiffs have brought a complex civil rights

action involving numerous challenges to institutional practices

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5 The First Amended Complaint includes the following

eight claims: (1) declaratory relief; (2) violations of federal

due process rights; (3) violations of federal securities laws;

(4) violations of California’s Unclaimed Property Law; (5)

injunctive relief; (6) an accounting; (7) attorneys fees and

common fund; and (8) a taxpayer action. (First Amended Complaint

(“FAC”).) 

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or conditions.5 The additional claims and allegations are

unrelated to plaintiffs’ notice claim--i.e. the single claim they

contend that they have “prevailed” upon. Thus, an interim fee

award based on the entirety of plaintiffs’ efforts would--in

contravene of established precedent--undoubtedly compensate them

for hours and costs expended on unrelated claims. 

2. Unreasonable Delay or Use of Illegitimate Tactics

Plaintiffs contend the protracted and repetitive nature

of defendants’ litigation strategy is calculated to gain an

unfair bargaining advantage over plaintiffs with purported

limited resources, and thus should constitute a 60% enhancement

of their fees. (Palmer Decl. ¶ 14.) Plaintiffs offer no

substantive support for this conclusory assertion. The Ninth

Circuit has definitively stated that diligent advocacy on behalf

of the government will not presumptively constitute dilatory

tactics supporting the enhancement of a hypothetical fee award. 

See Chalmers v. City of Los Angeles, 796 F.2d 1205, 1215 (9th

Cir. 1985) (“[W]e cannot agree that a government entity’s

sometimes overzealous defense of a case, absent some evidence of

intentional misconduct, warrants an enhancement of a fee

award.”). 

In its entirety, plaintiffs’ motion for interim

attorneys’ fees and costs is devoid of meritorious showing of

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hardship and/or dilatory litigation tactics on the part of

defendants. Accordingly, the court will not exercise its

discretion to grant plaintiffs’ motion for interim attorneys’

fees and costs to be paid at this time by defendants. 

IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that plaintiffs’ motion for

interim attorneys’ fees and costs be, and the same hereby is,

DENIED.

DATED: October 30, 2007

 

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