Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-97-07234/USCOURTS-caDC-97-07234-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 550
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Civil Rights (U.S. defendant)
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 28, 1998 Decided October 30, 1998

No. 97-7234

Inmates of D.C. Jail,

Appellees

v.

Delbert C. Jackson,

Appellant

Consolidated with

Nos. 97-7235 and 97-7236

Appeals from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 71cv01462)

(No. 75cv01668)

Lutz Alexander Prager, Assistant Deputy Corporation

Counsel, argued the cause for appellant. With him on the

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briefs were John M. Ferren, Corporation Counsel, and

Charles L. Reischel, Deputy Corporation Counsel.

Kimberly A. Jackson argued the cause for appellees. With

her on the brief were J. Patrick Hickey and Jonathan Smith.

Before: Edwards, Chief Judge, Wald and Sentelle,

Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the court filed by Circuit Judge Sentelle.

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge Wald.

Sentelle, Circuit Judge: In this suit brought on behalf of

the inmates of the D.C. jail, the District of Columbia appeals

the district court's award of attorney's fees at market rates

for work performed after the passage of the Prison Litigation

Reform Act ("PLRA"), Title VIII of the Omnibus Consolidated Rescissions and Appropriations Act of 1996, Pub. L. No.

104-134, 110 Stat. 1321 (1996), codified at 18 U.S.C. s 3626

and 42 U.S.C. s 1997e. We hold that the attorney's fees

limitations in the PLRA apply to all work performed after the

effective date of the Act, and reverse the district court for the

reasons stated below.

I. Background

The Prison Litigation Reform Act was designed, inter alia,

to stop frivolous prisoner lawsuits by placing some of the

financial burden for litigation on parties and increasing financial and other burdens on prisoners found to have filed

meritless cases. The Act also requires attorneys seeking fee

awards to show that the hours they expend in successful suits

are directly related to the problems they are trying to solve.

Another provision, at issue here, places a statutory cap on the

hourly fees that may be awarded to the attorneys who litigate

prisoner lawsuits, even in cases which ultimately prove to

have merit. Section 803(d) of the PLRA provides in relevant

part:

(d) Attorney's fees

(1) In any action brought by a prisoner who is confined to any jail, prison, or other correctional facility,

in which attorney's fees are authorized under section

1988 [Section 2 of the Revised Statutes of the United

States (42 U.S.C.1988)]....

...

(3) 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. s 1997e(d). This appeal requires us to determine

whether the cap on attorney's fees contained in the PLRA

should be applied to work performed in these consolidated

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cases after the Act became effective, when the original fee

award was determined a decade before.

The actions in this consolidated appeal, originally filed in

1971, challenged as unconstitutional the conditions at the D.C.

jail. The plaintiffs in the two cases, Campbell v. McGruder

and Inmates of the D.C. Jail v. Jackson, challenged the same

conditions at the jails and requested the same relief. (The

Campbell class comprised pre-trial detainees, while the Inmates class comprised convicted prisoners.) In 1975, the

district court found that the conditions did indeed violate the

Constitution because of severe overcrowding, inadequate

health care, unsanitary conditions, and unsafe facilities. The

district court issued an injunction ordering the District of

Columbia to improve the conditions for inmates. Since the

original injunction issued, the district court has found a

pattern of continuing violations and has repeatedly issued

orders attempting to bring conditions at the D.C. jail into

compliance with constitutional minimums. The D.C. jail has

been so recalcitrant in complying with court-ordered reforms

that the judge whose injunction the plaintiffs' attorneys are

monitoring has said that the jail's lack of compliance borders

on bad faith. Appellees' Brief at 5 (citing Transcript, Nov. 1,

1994 Hearing, Inmates of the D.C. Jail v. Jackson (No.

75-1668) at 19-20 (statement of Judge Bryant)). After years

of attempting to get D.C. to voluntarily comply, and appointing a Special Master to coordinate with D.C. in an attempt to

alleviate conditions, the district court ordered that the jail's

medical and mental health services be placed in receivership

in 1995. Now, in addition to the attorneys for the plaintiffs, a

court-appointed Special Master monitors compliance with existing orders, and the D.C. jail's medical and mental health

services remain under the control of a receiver. This appeal

involves the award of attorney's fees to plaintiffs' counsel for

hours spent monitoring the D.C. jail, attempting to ensure

that after twenty-seven years, the District of Columbia ends

its continuing violations of the prisoners' civil rights.

II. Attorney's fees

The award of attorney's fees in this case comes against a

complicated statutory backdrop. When the action was originally filed, the Campbell plaintiffs included a Section 1983

claim, but dropped it in light of District of Columbia v.

Carter, 409 U.S. 418 (1973), which held that Section 1983 did

not apply to the District of Columbia. The Inmates case was

filed after the decision in Carter, and did not contain a

Section 1983 claim. The attorneys litigated the case pro bono

for a decade. It was not until Congress amended Section

1983 in 1979 to cover the District of Columbia (see Pub. L.

No. 96-170, s 1, 93 Stat. 1284 (1979)) that the attorneys in

this case became eligible for fees. Attorney's fees in civil

rights actions had been made available by amendment in

1976. The relevant portion of the Civil Rights Attorney's

Fees Award Act, Pub. L. No. 94-559, 62, 90 Stat. 2641 (1976)

(codified at 42 U.S.C. s 1988(b)), provides that "[i]n any

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action or proceeding to enforce a provision of [section 1983]

the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party,

other than the United States, a reasonable attorney's fee as

part of the costs." The Supreme Court held that section 1988

applied retroactively to all civil rights cases pending at the

time of its enactment. Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678, 694

n.23 (1978). In 1985, the plaintiffs in Campbell and Inmates

moved to amend their complaints to include Section 1983

claims, and filed for attorney's fees under Section 1988.

In February, 1988, the district court awarded the plaintiffs

"reasonable" attorney's fees and set the award at market

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rates. Multiple payments were made from the District to the

plaintiffs' attorneys under that order. This appeal arises

because the attorneys now seek a fee award for work performed after the passage of the PLRA. In 1997, the district

court awarded attorney's fees for compliance-monitoring work

done in 1996 and 1997 at market rates, pursuant to its 1988

order. The district court considered the existence of the

PLRA in its order, but found it inapplicable. The district

court reasoned that the plaintiffs' attorneys' right to fees

vested in 1988 when its first fee award order was issued. In

making its determination, the district court applied the test

for retroactive application of statutes laid out by the Supreme

Court in Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U.S. 244, 280

(1994):

When a case implicates a federal statute enacted after

the events in suit, the court's first task is to determine

whether Congress has expressly prescribed the statute's

proper reach. If Congress has done so, of course, there

is no need to resort to judicial default rules. When,

however, the statute contains no such express command,

the court must determine whether the new statute would

have a retroactive effect, i.e., whether it would impair

rights a party possessed when he acted, increase a

party's liability for past conduct, or impose new duties

with respect to transactions already completed. If the

statute would operate retroactively, our traditional presumption teaches that it does not govern absent clear

congressional intent favoring such a result.

The district court determined that "[a]pplying the PLRA to

Plaintiffs' motion for attorneys' fees would contravene the

plain language of the statute as well as its legislative history

and would result in manifest injustice to the plaintiffs."

Campbell v. McGruder, No. 71-1462, slip op. at 2-3 (D.D.C.

filed Oct. 29, 1997) (mem.). The phrase "any action brought

by a prisoner" in Section 802 means any action filed after the

effective date of the Act, the district court reasoned. The

court concluded in particular that applying the PLRA limitations retroactively to these cases, which have been litigated

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by the same groups of attorneys since 1971, would be "manifestly unjust." Id. at 6. The District appeals the fee award.

III. Retroactivity and the PLRA

The inmates urge us to adopt the district court's reasoning

that the words "any action brought by a prisoner" mean any

action brought after the enactment of the PLRA. That

position was adopted by the Sixth Circuit in Hadix v. Johnson, 143 F.3d 246 (6th Cir. 1998), and was cited with approval

by the district court in its memorandum opinion. They point

to the juxtaposition of Sections 802 and 803 of the PLRA, and

argue that the explicit application of Section 802 to pending

actions shows that when Congress intended a section of the

Act to apply retroactively, it did so expressly. See Jensen v.

Clarke, 94 F.3d 1191, 1203 (8th Cir. 1996) (contrasting congressional treatment of Section 802 and 803 and finding no

intent to create retroactive application of Section 803). They

argue that taken together, the plain language, the negative

inference to be drawn from the absence of retroactivity

provisions, and the legislative history all show that the plain

meaning of the statute is that it should apply only to actions

arising after the passage of the Act.

At the very least, they argue, should the court find that

there is some ambiguity, applying the three-part test of

Landgraf and Lindh v. Murphy, 117 S. Ct. 2059 (1997),

requires the court to find in their favor because to do

otherwise would result in manifest injustice. The inmates

cite Watson v. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare,

for the proposition that applying a statute that decreases,

rather than increases, attorney's fees to work performed in

pending litigation after the passage of the statute is impermissible. 562 F.2d 386 (6th Cir. 1977) (interpreting potentially

retroactive fee-capping regulation in black lung cases).

We are unpersuaded. We do not find in the statute the

plain meaning urged by the prisoners. There is simply nothing in the phrase "any action" that implies, let alone compels,

a holding that the statute applies only to actions brought

after the passage of the Act. Nor does the language compel

resort to legislative history in an attempt to clarify its meaning. We are also not convinced that there is a negative

inference to be drawn from a comparison of Sections 802 and

803 of the PLRA. Section 802 of the PLRA amends an

entirely different statutory section, 18 U.S.C. s 3626. It is

unsurprising that Congress would use differing language to

amend different statutory provisions, and the absence of the

Section 803 language simply will not bear the burden urged

by the inmates. If this case involved a genuine question of

retroactivity, that is, if the District were seeking to apply the

cap to hours worked before the effective date of the statute,

we might find the omission more compelling. But the District advances no such argument, and we join the Eighth

Circuit in holding that retroactivity concerns are not implicated when the statute is applied to work performed after April

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26, 1996, the date of passage of the PLRA. See Williams v.

Brimeyer, 122 F.3d 1093, 1094 (8th Cir. 1997).

When it is applied to work performed after the effective

date of the Act, the PLRA raises none of the retroactivity

concerns that require the analysis used by the district court

because the statute creates present and future effects on

present and future conduct, and has no effect on past conduct.

Compare Jensen, 94 F.3d at 1203 (holding that the PLRA did

not apply to pre-Act work) with Williams, 122 F.3d at 1094

(holding that as applied to work performed after the passage

of the Act, there is no retroactivity). The fees at issue were

earned after the PLRA passed. The PLRA does not in this

case upset vested interests because no right to a fee existed

until the work was done. Because we find no retroactive

effect, we need not consider the Supreme Court's extensive

analysis of when to permit retroactive application. See Landgraf, 511 U.S. 244; Lindh, 117 S. Ct. 2059. As the Supreme

Court stated in Landgraf, normally " 'a court is to apply the

law in effect at the time it renders its decision.' " 511 U.S. at

264 (quoting Bradley v. School Bd. of Richmond, 416 U.S.

696, 711 (1974)).

In Landgraf, the Supreme Court noted that it has adopted

a functional definition of retroactivity. See id. at 268-69 &

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n.23. In Miller v. Florida, it stated that "[a] law is retrospective if it 'changes the legal consequences of acts completed

before its effective date.' " 482 U.S. 423, 430 (1987) (quoting

Weaver v. Graham, 450 U.S. 24, 31 (1981)). To determine if a

statute has retroactive effect, the court must decide "whether

it would impair rights a party possessed when he acted,

increase a party's liability for past conduct, or impose new

duties with respect to transactions already completed."

Landgraf, 511 U.S. at 280. In determining whether the

statute has retroactive effect, the court should consider "fair

notice, reasonable reliance, and settled expectations." Id. at

270. In this case, the work at issue was not done until after

the passage of the Act. The attorneys did not possess a right

to payment until they performed the work for which the fees

were awarded, and thus had no settled expectations. Simply

put, as applied in this case, the PLRA does not impair rights

or upset expectations that did not exist prior to its passage,

and could not exist after its passage. Because we hold only

that the fee limitations apply to work performed after the

passage of the Act, there is no need to continue the retroactivity analysis.

We stress now the limits of our holding. We do not

subscribe to the Fourth Circuit's position that the Act applies

to fees awarded after the passage of the Act, regardless of

whether the work was performed before the statute was

enacted. See Alexander S. v. Boyd, 113 F.3d 1373, 1386 (4th

Cir. 1997). We find persuasive those cases that have held

that the PLRA would have retroactive effect if applied to

work performed before the Act was passed. See Glover v.

Johnson, 138 F.3d 229, 250 (6th Cir. 1998) ("[A]pplication of

the attorney-fee provisions to a fee motion that was pending

at the time of the PLRA's passage and that pertained solely

to work performed before the statute's passage would undeniably work an impermissible retroactive effect."); Blissett v.

Casey 147 F.3d 218, 220-21 (2nd Cir. 1998); Cooper v. Casey,

97 F.3d 914, 921 (7th Cir. 1996); Jensen, 94 F.3d at 1203.

Even the District conceded before this court that under

Landgraf, applying the PLRA to work performed before

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April 26, 1996 would upset settled expectations and result in

manifest injustice. See Landgraf, 511 U.S. at 277.

IV. Conclusion

We hold that applying the fee-capping provisions of Section

803 of the PLRA to work performed after April 26, 1996, does

not implicate retroactivity concerns. The Act creates present

and future effects on conduct performed after the passage of

the Act. Section 803 caps attorney's fees earned after the

effective date of the Act at 150% of the hourly rate established by 18 U.S.C. s 3006A, and that fee cap applies to the

work performed by the attorneys for Inmates and Campbell

which is at issue in this case. We vacate the order of the

district court and remand for proceedings in accordance with

this opinion.

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Wald, Circuit Judge, dissenting: I disagree with the panel

that under Landgraf and Lindh because "the work at issue

was not done until after passage" of section 803(d) of the

Prison Litigation Reform Act ("PLRA"), 42 U.S.C.

s 1997e(d), "[t]he attorneys did not possess a right to payment ... and thus had no settled expectations [of payment],"

Majority Opinion ("Maj. Op.") at 8. In the panel's view, the

mere fact that the services in question had been performed

after the fee cap went into effect meant that the lawyers

would not be retroactively hurt even though these services

were performed on a case initially undertaken long before the

Act. While I agree with the majority that the statutory

language is not "plain" as to whether Congress meant to

apply section 1997e(d) to pending actions and that the legislative history is ambiguous as well, I do not believe under

Landgraf's mandate the panel is entitled to ignore the presumption against retroactive application of a law when "manifest injustice" will result and adopt, as it did, an a priori

reasoning that imposing the fee cap on any work performed

after the Act's passage does not constitute a retroactive

application.1

The Supreme Court in Landgraf v. USI Film Products,

511 U.S. 244 (1994), cautioned against drawing cursory conclusions about retroactivity based solely on when the conduct

immediately affected by the law in question occurred. As to

conduct preceding the passage of the law, the Court admonished:

__________

1 My own reading of section 1997e(d), like the district court's,

would confine it to cases brought after the passage of the Act. I

note section 1997e(a) (dealing with exhaustion) speaks of an action

which "shall be brought" and although the section most relevant

here, 1997e(d)(1), uses "any action brought," I think it strained to

conclude that (d)(1) is meant to apply to pending cases while (a)

clearly is not. Section 1997e(d)(3) speaks of an award "in an action

described in paragraph (1)," a limiting clause that would seem

unnecessary if any post-Act award in a prisoner case were to be

covered by the cap. In any case, I agree basically with Hadix v.

Johnson, 143 F.3d 246 (6th Cir. 1998), construing this section not to

apply to cases already ongoing in the courts.

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A statute does not operate "retrospectively" merely because it is applied in a case arising from conduct antedating the statute's enactment ... or upsets expectations

based in prior law. Rather, the court must ask whether

the new provision attaches new legal consequences to

events completed before its enactment. The conclusions

that a particular rule operates "retroactively" comes at

the end of a process of judgment concerning the nature

and extent of the change in the law and the degree of

connection between the operation of the new rule and a

relevant past event.

Id. at 269-70 (citations omitted) (footnotes omitted), quoted in

LaFontant v. Immigration & Naturalization Service, 135

F.3d 158, 161 (D.C. Cir. 1998). This caution surely applies as

well to conduct occurring temporally after the law is in effect

but which is an inextricable part of a course of conduct

initiated prior to the law. Acknowledgedly, whether section

1997e(d) "attaches new legal consequences to events completed before its enactment" depends in large part on the answer

to the basic question of whether attorney's fee statutes regulate conduct that is merely secondary or ancillary to the

parties' conduct, or whether such laws have real impact on

the legal rights the parties. See Landgraf, 511 U.S. at 275 &

n.29. This has been said to present a "close[ ] question." Id.

at 289 (Scalia, J., concurring). But I believe that the feeshifting provision under which this case has been litigated, 42

U.S.C. s 1988--which is designed to facilitate the litigation of

worthy civil rights violations--gives rise to a strong argument

that the triggering event for retroactivity purposes is when

the lawyer undertakes to litigate the civil rights action on

behalf of the client. Thus a subsequent radical change in the

law as to the lawyer's eligibility, if successful, to collect fees

computed in a particular manner for his services does indeed

constitute "new legal consequences to events completed before ... enactment."

An important characteristic of the Court's retroactivity

analysis is that it is capacious and flexible enough to account

for the circumstances of each particular case. See Lindh v.

Murphy, 117 S. Ct. 2059, 2063 (1997) ("In sum, if the applicaUSCA Case #97-7234 Document #392866 Filed: 10/30/1998 Page 11 of 14
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tion of a term would be retroactive as to Lindh, the term will

not be applied, even if, in the absence of a retroactive effect,

we might find the term applicable...."); United States v.

Ortiz, 136 F.3d 161, 166 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (circuits addressing

potential retroactivity of AEDPA's amendments to section

2255 "share in their approaches [ ] the requirement that the

new enactment be retroactive as applied to the particular

claim before the court"). Equity and fairness are also to be

considered in the analysis. The Court in Bradley v. School

Board of Richmond, 416 U.S. 696 (1974), applied a new feeshifting provision of the Education Amendments of 1972 to a

pending school desegregation case based largely on these

principles. The district court in Bradley had already exercised its equitable authority to award attorney's fees to the

plaintiffs in that case, and "as [the Court's] opinion in Bradley

made clear, it would be difficult to imagine a stronger equitable case for an attorney's fee award than a lawsuit in which

the plaintiff parents would otherwise have to bear the costs of

desegregating their children's public schools." Landgraf, 511

U.S. at 277.

The plaintiffs make a strong case here that application of

section 1997e(d) to work performed after April 24, 1996, is

impermissibly retroactive. Section 1988 is a keystone in the

enforcement scheme of our civil rights laws. Section 1988

"was no doubt intended to encourage litigation protecting civil

rights." Kay v. Ehrler, 499 U.S. 432, 436 (1991). As stated

in the Senate Report accompanying passage of section 1988,

"All of these civil rights laws depend heavily on private

enforcement, and fee awards have proved an essential remedy

if private citizens are to have a meaningful opportunity to

vindicate the important Congressional policies which these

laws contain." S. Rep. No. 94-1011, at 2 (1976), reprinted in

1976 U.S.C.C.A.N. 5908, 5910. This surely calls for a closer

examination of the effects wrought by section 1997e(d) on the

prisoners' legal rights than the majority has undertaken. See

also Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 444 (1989) (Brennan,

J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) ("In enacting

section 1988, Congress rejected the traditional assumption

that private choices whether to litigate, compromise, or forgo

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a potential claim will yield a socially desirable level of enforcement as far as the enumerated civil rights statutes are

concerned."); Copeland v. Marshall, 641 F.2d 880, 895 (D.C.

Cir. 1980) (parallel fee provision in Title VII must be interpreted broadly because "the prospect of liability for an attorney's fee may help deter discrimination") (footnote omitted);

Ortiz v. Regan, 980 F.2d 138, 140 (2d Cir. 1992) (section 1988

"was designed to allow private individuals a meaningful opportunity to vindicate civil rights violations"); Seattle School

Dist. No. 1 v. State of Washington, 633 F.2d 1338, 1348 (9th

Cir. 1980) ("The congressional purpose in providing attorney's

fees in civil rights cases was to eliminate financial barriers to

the vindication of constitutional rights and to stimulate voluntary compliance with the law.").

The two prisoners' cases before us now have been in

litigation for a combined total of 50 years. The prisoners'

lawyers became eligible for attorneys' fees when section 1988

was made applicable to the District of Columbia in 1979, and

they have consistently received fee awards at market rates

for work performed from 1983 onward. Much of this work

has grown out of the lawyers' dogged efforts to monitor the

District's compliance with a series of stipulated orders that

the parties undertook beginning in 1984. The Rules of

Professional Conduct, see D.C. Rules of Prof. Conduct

1.16(b), preclude lawyers from withdrawing from a case in

midstream except under extraordinary circumstances. It

follows that once section 1988 was passed, a rational plaintiffs'

lawyer anticipating a long and time-intensive case involving

lengthy monitoring and compliance negotiations would have

had to have expectations that if he prevailed for his clients he

would be paid on the reasonable basis set out in that statute.

Ethical high-grade representation of a class of civil rights

plaintiffs, especially prisoners, does not consist of a series of

discrete legal services that can be stopped and started again

at any time, but rather a continuous responsibility to see the

litigation through to its natural conclusion. In that very real

sense, the PLRA has changed the rules of the game midstream and unsettled settled expectations of both lawyers and

clients. Thus I agree with the learned district judge that in

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the absence of a clear congressional intent, the cap should not

be applied to post-PLRA work undertaken to complete a legal

obligation entered into prior to the law. In sum, application

of the PLRA's limitations on attorneys' fees to legal services

performed after the PLRA's enactment on a case undertaken

prior to the Act does attach retroactively "new legal consequences to events completed before its enactment"--both for

the parties and the lawyers. I therefore respectfully dissent.

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