Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_04-cv-02305/USCOURTS-cand-3_04-cv-02305-2/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 42:1983 Civil Rights Act

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United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

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United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

LILLIE WILLIS, et al,

Plaintiffs,

v

CITY OF OAKLAND, et al,

Defendants.

 /

No C 04-2305 VRW

ORDER

On July 26, 2005, the court entered an order finding that

plaintiffs’ counsel John L Burris and Miles Washington should be

sanctioned pursuant to 28 USC § 1927 and FRCP 11. Doc #36. The

July 26, 2005, order is hereby VACATED. This order shall supersede

the July 26, 2005 order. 

For the reasons discussed below, the court SANCTIONS

Messrs Burris and Washington pursuant to FRCP 11. The court ORDERS

Burris and Washington to pay $10,800 to the court on or before

November 15, 2005. 

//

Case 3:04-cv-02305-JW Document 40 Filed 10/27/05 Page 1 of 13
United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

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I

On June 19, 2005, the court ordered Burris and Washington

to show cause why they should not be sanctioned pursuant to FRCP 11

and 28 USC § 1927. Doc #30 at 12-14 (the “OSC”). The parties are

familiar with the facts underlying the OSC and thus the court need

not fully recite them here. Suffice it to say the court concluded

that the filing of plaintiffs’ complaint was predicated on an

inadequate investigation and that this reckless behavior by Burris

and Washington unreasonably and vexatiously multiplied the

proceedings in this case. Id. 

Burris and Washington filed their individual responses to

the OSC on June 30, 2005. Docs #32 (Burris Resp); #33 (Washington

Resp). In an order entered July 26, 2005, the court concluded that

Burris and Washington had unreasonably and vexatiously multiplied

the proceedings in this case in violation of 28 USC § 1927. Doc

#36 at 5. The court directed defendants to file their request for

attorney fees and costs reasonably incurred in (1) drafting and

filing their original answer, (2) researching, drafting and filing

their motion for judgment on the pleadings and (3) attending the

February 24, 2005, hearing. Id. Defendants submitted their

request for attorney fees and costs on August 12, 2005. Doc #38. 

After reviewing the applicable law, the court concludes

it cannot sanction the filing of the original complaint with an

award of fees under § 1927. “The filing of a complaint may be

sanctioned pursuant to Rule 11 or a court’s inherent authority, but

it may not be sanctioned pursuant to § 1927.” In re Keegan Mgmt

Co, Securities Litigation, 78 F3d 431, 435 (9th Cir 1996). This is

so because § 1927 “applies only to unnecessary filings and tactics

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once a lawsuit has begun.” Id; see also Zaldivar v City of Los

Angeles 780 F2d 823, 831 (9th Cir 1986) (“[T]he multiplication of

proceedings is punished, thus placing initial pleadings beyond [§

1927's] reach.”); Matter of Yagman, 796 F2d 1165, 1187 (9th Cir),

amended, 803 F2d 1085 (9th Cir 1986). Although the court is

ultimately responsible for ensuring that the law is correctly

applied in any case, the court notes that Burris and Washington

failed to bring this point of law to the court’s attention in their

responses to the OSC.

The court now turns to evaluating the propriety of Rule

11 sanctions for the conduct addressed in the July 26 order.

II

“Where, as here, the complaint is the primary focus of

Rule 11 proceedings, a district court must conduct a two-prong

inquiry to determine (1) whether the complaint is legally or

factually ‘baseless’ from an objective perspective, and (2) if the

attorney has conducted ‘a reasonable and competent inquiry’ before

signing and filing it.” Christian v Mattel, Inc, 286 F3d 1118,

1127 (9th Cir 2002) (quoting Buster v Greisen, 104 F3d 1186, 1190

(9th Cir 1997)). In other words, it is not enough that an attorney

conducted an insufficient factual investigation before filing the

complaint; the complaint must also be, from an objective

perspective, legally or factually baseless. See In re Keegan, 78

F3d at 434-35 (disapproving Unioil, Inc v E F Hutton and Co, 809

F2d 548 (9th Cir 1986)). The inquiry whether the complaint is

factually baseless can be stated thus: Would a reasonable attorney

have believed plaintiff’s complaint to be well-founded in fact

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based on what a reasonable attorney would have known at the time? 

See id at 434.

With these legal principles in mind, the court turns to

the responses to the OSC submitted by Burris and Washington.

A 

The first two pages of Burris’s response read like a

curriculum vitae rather than a response to an order to show cause. 

While the court does not doubt Burris’s past contributions to the

California legal community, these accomplishments do not explain or

mitigate Burris’s current behavior. Indeed, Burris’s years of

experience and success serve to magnify the egregiousness of the

conduct at issue in this case. 

Turning to the relevant portions of Burris’ response,

Burris claims that, initially, he and plaintiffs “had a lengthy

discussion about what happened to Gregory Lewis (the decedent) and

any related legal claims.” Burris Resp at 3 ¶7. Burris claims

that “during the meeting[,] plaintiffs gave [him] the names of

potential witnesses.” Id ¶8. Burris informs the court:

As is my customary practice, I hired a Private

Investigator to follow up with the witnesses whose

names were provided by the plaintiffs and to canvass

the neighborhood for potential witnesses. The

investigator was Harvey Yarbrough. Prior to filing

the lawsuit, Mr Yarbrough provided me with an oral

report with regard to the status of his

investigation. I have been unable to contact Mr

Yarbrough at this time regarding this case due to

his retirement from private investigation. 

Id ¶9.

Burris’s response does not state whether Yarbrough confirmed or

refuted plaintiffs’ account of events surrounding the death of Glen

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Willis. Indeed, Burris does not substantively inform the court

regarding anything Yarbrough allegedly told Burris. The court does

not know who Yarbrough investigated, what these persons witnessed

and relayed to Yarbrough or whether Yarbrough relayed this

information to Burris. 

 Next, Burris states that he contacted Protection and

Advocacy Inc (PAI), a publicly funded organization that advocates

for the mentally and physically impaired. Id at 4 ¶10. Burris

contacted PAI “seeking information about [cases] similarly related”

to plaintiffs’ case. Id. Burris states that “[PAI] was somewhat

helpful in assessing this case.” Id. 

Based on these events alone, Burris asserts that he

signed and filed plaintiffs’ complaint “based upon [his]

understanding of the facts at the time.” Id at 4 ¶11. 

Accordingly, Burris signed the complaint based on (1) a single

interview with plaintiffs, (2) an oral “status” report (the

substance of which remains a mystery) from a now-unavailable

Yarbrough and (3) some form of limited conduct with PAI, an agency

with having no connection to the events giving rise to plaintiffs’

complaint. This is not an adequate investigation. Burris does not

explain (1) how the new and substantially different facts contained

in the first amended complaint (FAC) were discovered or (2) why his

adequate prefiling investigation (which Burris appears to claim he

conducted) failed to uncover these “new” facts.

B

Burris states that “[a]t some point in the process, the

case was assigned to Miles Washington, a member of this bar, who

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leases office space in my suite, and who frequently works on my

cases as an independent contractor.” Id at ¶12. Washington’s

response to the court’s OSC is essentially one-page in length. Doc

#33. Although short, Washington’s response (unlike Burris’s

response) is quite telling regarding the events that preceded the

filing of plaintiffs’ complaint.

Washington states that he “was requested by Mr Burris to

prepare and file a complaint” in this case. Id at 2 ¶2. 

Washington states that “when [he] received the file, it contained a

claim dated August 13, 2003. The matter had been referred to the

Citizen’s Complaint Review Board but had not been heard.” Id. 

Washington states that he 

drafted the complaint on the basis of the facts

stated in the claims which contained no allegations

that Officer Clement shot Mr Willis. There were no

documents in the file which indicated that there was

more to the incident than had been described in the

claim. I thought I had sufficient information to

prepare the complaint.

Id ¶3.

Accordingly, Washington admits that he drafted and filed

plaintiffs’ complaint based entirely on papers contained in a file;

he conducted no independent investigation into the allegations. It

appears Burris then signed the complaint with no further

investigation. 

Moreover, at the February 24, 2005, hearing, Washington

represented that this inadequate investigation could be explained

because the statute of limitations on plaintiffs’ claims was about

to expire. Notably, Washington’s response to the OSC does not

explain this blatantly false representation. 

Finally, Washington states that “[w]hen I received

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defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings, I contacted the

clients to review the facts and instructed an investigator to get

statements from witnesses whose names I had received from the

clients. I [then] learned that Officer Clement had taken the

action which was first in the proposed amended complaint.” Id at

¶4. In effect, therefore, Washington confirms that neither he nor

Burris made a reasonable inquiry in this case prior to defendants’

filing a motion for judgment on the pleadings pursuant to FRCP

12(c). In sum, the court has no trouble concluding that the

prefiling factual investigation was objectively inadequate. 

Further, had an investigation of the type made after the

filing of defendants’ Rule 12(c) motion been conducted prior to the

filing of plaintiffs’ complaint, the egregiously different facts

contained in the FAC would no doubt have surfaced. In other words,

the complaint was, objectively, factually baseless. After a

reasonable investigation, a reasonable lawyer would have known the

complaint was not well founded in fact. Had Burris and Washington

conducted themselves as reasonable lawyers, defendants would not

have been put to answering the frivolous original complaint and

moving for judgment on the pleadings. Rule 11 sanctions are

therefore appropriate.

III

A

In response to the July 26, 2005, order, defendants

submitted an accounting of attorneys’ fees and expenses incurred in

connection with plaintiffs’ frivolous original complaint. That

information has assisted the court in assigning a monetary value to

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the burden imposed by Burris and Washington’s sanctionable conduct. 

Although the court continues to believe that defendants should not

have to bear the cost of defending against the original complaint,

the court, regretfully, cannot award attorneys’ fees and costs

pursuant to Rule 11 given the posture of this proceeding. Rule 11

“distinguishes between sanctions imposed upon motion of a party and

those imposed by show-cause order on the initiative of the court.” 

Barber v Miller, 146 F3d 707, 711 (9th Cir 1998). Specifically,

the court cannot on its own initiative impose sanctions by

directing payment of attorneys’ fees and expenses incurred as a

result of a Rule 11 violation. Id. 

Rule 11 sanctions are designed to deter, not compensate. 

The court finds that Burris and Washington’s conduct is best

deterred by forcing them to bear the social costs of their actions. 

Here, those costs include expenses needlessly incurred by

defendants in litigating the original complaint; the court will

fashion a sanction on this basis. The court does not suggest,

however, that unnecessary legal fees are the only social

consequences of carelessly invoking the judicial process.

With the benefit of defendants’ submissions, the court

turns to quantifying the burden that was unjustifiably imposed upon

defendants by the filing of a frivolous complaint.

B

To determine a reasonable attorney fee award, the court

employs the lodestar method. Yahoo!, Inc v Net Games, Inc, 329 F

Supp 2d 1179, 1182 (ND Cal 2004). “Three figures are salient in a

lodestar calculation: (1) counsel’s reasonable hours, (2)

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counsel’s reasonable hourly rate and (3) a multiplier thought to

compensate for various factors (including unusual skill or

experience of counsel or the ex ante risk of nonrecovery in the

litigation).” In re HPL Technologies, Inc Securities Litigation,

366 F Supp 2d 912, 919 (ND Cal 2005) (Walker, J). A multiplier is

irrelevant to the fee calculation in this instance because the

court need not consider the results achieved by defense counsel in

connection with the original complaint. Indeed, the original

complaint collapsed from the weight of its own inadequacies. 

Accordingly, the court need only consider defense counsel’s

reasonable hours and reasonable hourly rate in computing the

lodestar.

Defendants requested compensation for 59 hours of legal

services (49 hours expended by attorneys and 10 hours expended by a

paralegal) performed in connection with (1) drafting and filing

their original answer, (2) researching, drafting and filing their

motion for judgment on the pleadings and (3) attending the February

24, 2005, hearing. Doc #39 (Hodgkins Decl) at 2-3. The court

finds defendants’ request for 59 hours to be reasonable. 

 The court now turns to determining a reasonable hourly

rate. More than one methodology exists to make this determination. 

Billing all attorney time at a “blended” hourly rate is probably

the appropriate methodology in most lodestar calculations based on

its simplicity and promotion of efficiency. HPL Technologies, 366

F Supp 2d at 921. Such blended rates (perhaps in the $200 per hour

neighborhood) typically depend on “the overall billing mix”

including substantial time expended by junior attorneys with less

experience and low hourly billing rates. Id. 

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In Laffey v Northwest Airlines, Inc, 572 F Supp 354 (DDC

1983), aff’d in part, rev’d in part on other grounds, 746 F2d 4 (DC

Cir 1984), the court employed a variety of hourly billing rates to

account for the various attorneys’ different levels of experience. 

The Laffey methodology is useful when an unusually large fraction

of either senior or junior attorney time is necessary, and spent,

by counsel in light of the complexity of the issues presented in a

case. 

The court notes that defendants’ counsel, namely James

Hodgkins and Chris Kee, both have over 13 years of legal

experience. Nevertheless, the court concludes that a “blended

hourly rate” rather than the Laffey methodology is sufficient in

this case to reflect the market rate for defendants’ counsels’

services. Plaintiffs’ original complaint was far from complex;

indeed, were it not for Burris and Washington’s inexplicable

behavior, this case would be a ordinary § 1983 complaint the likes

of which the City of Oakland no doubt handles on a regular basis. 

Accordingly, while the court notes Hodgkins and Kee’s many years of

experience and the quality of work they have produced, such senior

attorney time was not required to answer and draft a Rule 12(c)

motion in the present case. Hence, a blended hourly rate is

sufficient to compensate defendants.

On several occasions, the court has calculated an average

market rate in the local legal community as a whole using public

data from the United States Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor

Statistics (“BLS”). See, e g, Yahoo!, 329 F Supp 2d at 1189; Allen

v Bay Area Rapid Transit Dist, 2003 WL 23333580, at *6 (ND Cal

2003); Gilliam v Sonoma City, 2003 WL 23341211, at *3 (ND Cal

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2003). In Yahoo!, the court explained that:

The BLS provides data on the hourly wages earned by

attorneys * * *. To estimate the hourly rates

billed to clients, the court first calculated the

ratio of net receipts to gross receipts from data

compiled by the Census Bureau. This ratio was used

to approximate the overhead costs that would be

incorporated in the hourly rates billed to clients. 

The court then divided the BLS wage data (w) by the

ratio of net receipts (nr) to gross receipts (gr) to

determine an estimated average market rate (r)

* * *. 

Id at 1189. 

This methodology is represented by the following

equation: r = w / (nr/gr). Stated another way, the average market

rate r = w * (gr/nr). The most recent census data describing gross

and net receipts by law partnerships are located in “Statistical

Abstract of the United States: 2004-2005” (“2004 Statistical

Abstract”). See United States Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract

of the United States: 2004-2005, tbl 718, available at

http://www.census.gov/statab/www/. The 2004 Statistical Abstract

provides gross and net receipts for the year 2001. For law

partnerships, gross receipts totaled $91 billion and net receipts

totaled $32 billion. This yields a ratio of net receipts to gross

receipts of 0.351. Even though these data are four years old, it

is adequate for present purposes because law firm economics should

not vary significantly over such a short period. 

The most recent data available from the BLS describing

hourly wages in the San Francisco area are located in “November

2003 Metropolitan Area Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates

San Francisco, CA PMSA,” available at

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_7360.htm#b23-0000 (“2003 BLS

Wage Estimates”). The BLS provides wage estimates for “Legal

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Occupations” in the year 2003. The BLS’s estimates for lawyers are

a median hourly wage of $65.01/hr and a mean hourly wage of

$70.23/hr. Id. As in Yahoo!, the court selects the higher of the

median or mean hourly wage. Id at 1191. 

Dividing the most recent mean hourly wage for lawyers,

$70.23/hr, by the most recent ratio of net to gross receipts,

0.351, yields an estimate of $200/hr (rounded down from $200.08/hr)

as the average market rate for lawyers in the San Francisco area. 

Applying this rate to the present case, the Rule 11 sanctions will

reflect $9,800 in attorney fees expended by Hodgkins and Kee (49

hours x $200/hour = $9,800).

Next, the court must determine the rate of compensation

for the 10 hours of work expended by paralegal Garced in the

present case. Defendant state that Garced’s 2004 billing rate is

$92/hour. Hodgkins Decl at 5. Under the Laffey matrix, which

makes no adjustment based on a paralegal’s experience, the

prevailing billing rate for paralegals in $110/hour. See

www.usdoj.gov/usao/dc/Divisions/Civil_Division?Laffey_Matrix_4html. 

The court will simply split the difference and assign a rate of

$100/hour to Garced’s work. The Rule 11 sanctions will reflect

$1,000 in paralegal fees expended by Garced (10 hours x $100/hour =

$1,000).

IV

Given the unitary nature of Burris and Washington’s

conduct in this case, they are jointly and severally liable for the

full amount of the Rule 11 sanctions. Kona Enterprises, Inc v

Estate of Bishop, 229 F3d 877, 888-89 (9th Cir 2000); see also

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Pekarsky v Ariyoshi, 575 F Supp 673, 676-77 (D Hawaii 1983)

(Schwarzer, J). 

Further, such sanctions are appropriate at this point in

the proceedings. Regardless whether the plaintiffs in this case

ultimately prevail on claims asserted in the amended complaint, the

present conduct of their counsel will not be vindicated. Proving

the truth of the amended –- and drastically different -- factual

allegations will not alter the objective baselessness of the

original allegations. Sanctioning such conduct of Burris and

Washington now puts to rest that matter and they may now move on

into the second (and hopefully more promising) phase of this

litigation.

V

The July 26, 2005, order (Doc #36) is VACATED. John L

Burris and Miles Washington are hereby SANCTIONED pursuant to FRCP

11. Pursuant to FRCP 11(c)(1)(2), Burris and Washington are

ORDERED to pay sanctions in the amount of $10,800 to the court on

or before November 15, 2005.

 

SO ORDERED.

 

VAUGHN R WALKER

United States District Chief Judge

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