Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-15-03233/USCOURTS-ca13-15-03233-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Department of the Air Force
Respondent
Sherman Howard
Petitioner

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

SHERMAN HOWARD,

Petitioner

v.

DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE,

Respondent

______________________ 

2015-3233

______________________ 

Petition for review of the Merit Systems Protection 

Board in No. DA-0752-09-0172-A-3.

______________________ 

Decided: December 16, 2016

______________________ 

MARSHALL DECEDRIL WHITE, Law Office of Marshall 

D. White, San Antonio, TX, argued for petitioner. 

VITO SALVATORE SOLITRO, Commercial Litigation 

Branch, Civil Division, United States Department of 

Justice, Washington, DC, argued for respondent. Also 

represented by BENJAMIN C. MIZER, ROBERT E.

KIRSCHMAN, JR., BRYANT G. SNEE. 

______________________ 

Case: 15-3233 Document: 39-2 Page: 1 Filed: 12/16/2016
2 HOWARD v. AIR FORCE

Before PROST, Chief Judge, REYNA, and CHEN, Circuit 

Judges.

REYNA, Circuit Judge. 

Mr. Howard appeals a final decision of the Merit System’s Protection Board (“Board”) that eliminated a substantial amount of his claimed attorney’s fees. The 

Board’s determination to reduce the attorney’s fees Mr. 

Howard claimed was arbitrary and capricious, not in 

accordance with law, and unsupported by substantial 

evidence. Therefore, we vacate and remand for further 

proceedings consistent with this opinion.

BACKGROUND

This appeal concerns a motion for attorney’s fees involving a long dispute over adverse employment action 

taken against Mr. Howard by the Department of the Air 

Force. Mr. Howard was removed from his position as an 

auditor in the Air Force in 2008. The Board initially 

upheld the removal despite acknowledging that the 

deciding official relied on an aggravating factor to justify 

removal that was not mentioned in the notice of proposed 

removal given to Mr. Howard. To remedy the deciding 

official’s error, the Board conducted its own analysis, 

found that removal was within the bounds of reasonableness, and affirmed the agency’s action. 

When Mr. Howard appealed that decision to this 

court, the government moved to remand the case to the 

Board for further proceedings in light of our holding in 

Ward v. U.S. Postal Service, where we explained that due 

process violations occur when an agency’s removal decision is based on factors not included in the notice of 

proposed removal. 634 F.3d 1274, 1281 (Fed. Cir. 2011). 

We granted the motion to remand. Howard v. Dep’t. of the 

Air Force, 452 F. App’x. 965 (Fed. Cir. 2011).

On remand, in April 2012, the Board reversed the Air 

Force’s removal of Mr. Howard. Howard v. Dep’t of the 

Case: 15-3233 Document: 39-2 Page: 2 Filed: 12/16/2016
HOWARD v. AIR FORCE 3

Air Force, 118 M.S.P.R. 106 (2012). In that decision, the 

Board ordered the Air Force to comply with several directives, including, among other things, reinstatement and 

back pay with interest. After attempting to implement 

the Board’s instructions, the Air Force notified Mr. Howard on July 5, 2012 that it was in full compliance with the

Board’s order. 

On July 20, 2012, Mr. Howard filed a Petition for Enforcement (PFE) with the Board’s Denver field office 

raising eight claims of noncompliance. In response, the 

agency acknowledged that it was not in full compliance

and provided further relief. Mr. Howard, however, disagreed as to whether the agency was in compliance with 

the Board’s order to reinstate him to his former position 

with back pay. Regarding reinstatement, the agency 

maintained that it was appropriate to place Mr. Howard 

on administrative leave pending another removal action

initiated against him. As for back pay, the agency took 

the position that Mr. Howard would have to seek the 

additional back pay he sought from the Department of 

Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Program. The 

parties also disagreed as to whether the agency accurately 

calculated the required interest payment on the back pay

that the agency had already conceded was due. 

An administrative judge (AJ) granted Mr. Howard’s 

PFE in part. The AJ agreed with Mr. Howard that the 

agency erred in calculating the interest on his back pay. 

The agency complied with the AJ’s decision regarding 

interest on pack pay, which resulted in Mr. Howard 

receiving additional compensation. However, the AJ 

found that the Board’s reinstatement order was mooted 

by the agency’s subsequent removal action and that the 

agency was in compliance with the Board’s back pay 

order. 

Mr. Howard filed a Petition for Review (PFR) at the 

Board, arguing that the AJ erred with respect to his 

Case: 15-3233 Document: 39-2 Page: 3 Filed: 12/16/2016
4 HOWARD v. AIR FORCE

reinstatement and back pay claims. On March 25, 2014, 

the Board issued a final decision denying Mr. Howard’s 

PFR. On May 12, 2014, Mr. Howard filed a motion for 

attorney’s fees relating to services that his counsel, 

Mr. White, performed in connection with the PFE and 

PFR. 

THE BOARD’S DECISION

Considering the motion for fees, the AJ determined 

that Mr. Howard was a prevailing party, that attorney’s

fees were warranted in the interest of justice, and that 

Mr. White’s fees were billed at a reasonable rate. 

P.A. 6−9. The AJ applied the two-step framework for 

determining a reasonable attorney’s fee award, as established in Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424 (1983). 

Applying Hensley step one, the AJ calculated the lodestar, an approximation presumed to reflect a reasonable 

fee award, by multiplying Mr. White’s hourly rate by the 

number of hours he reasonably billed. In doing so, the AJ 

eliminated as unreasonable fifty-six of the 106 hours 

claimed. Applying Hensley step two, the AJ made a 

downward adjustment of twenty-eight hours to the lodestar based on the fact that Mr. Howard was unsuccessful

on certain claims at the PFR stage. Finally, the AJ 

eliminated an additional four hours for filings made on 

July 22, 2014 and August 9, 2014. P.A. 11−14. 

The AJ’s initial decision became the Board’s final decision on July 27, 2015. Mr. Howard appeals. We have 

jurisdiction to review the Board’s final decision pursuant 

to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(9). 

STANDARD OF REVIEW

The Federal Circuit will set aside a final Board decision upon finding that it was (1) arbitrary, capricious, an 

abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with 

law; (2) obtained without procedures required by law, 

rule, or regulation having been followed; or (3) unsupportCase: 15-3233 Document: 39-2 Page: 4 Filed: 12/16/2016
HOWARD v. AIR FORCE 5

ed by substantial evidence. 5 U.S.C. § 7703(c); Hayes v. 

Dep’t of the Navy, 727 F.2d 1535, 1537 (Fed. Cir. 1984). 

DISCUSSION

The Board’s decision was erroneous in three parts. 

First, the reduction of four hours for the filings 

Mr. Howard made on July 22, 2014 and August 9, 2014 is 

not supported by substantial evidence. As the government concedes, the record reveals that Mr. Howard did 

not request fees for time spent on those filings. P.A. 40. 

As a result, there is no evidence to support the elimination of these hours. See 5 U.S.C. § 7703(c)(3). 

Second, the Board’s determination that fifty-six of the 

160 hours requested were unreasonable is arbitrary and 

capricious, because it fails to sufficiently explain its 

rationale for the reductions. For example, after admitting 

that the PFE involved issues that “were mathematically 

complex and required considerable analysis,” the Board 

nonetheless reduced the hours claimed for preparing and 

filing the PFE from fifty hours to twenty. P.A. 11. In 

support of the reduction the Board determined that: “I 

find that 50 hours for preparing and filing a PFE that 

amounted to just 14 pages was not reasonable given Mr. 

White’s experience.” P.A. 11. 

Some documents are short because they contain little 

content; others are short because the author has taken 

the time and effort necessary to concisely convey the 

complex ideas therein. The Board has broad discretion to 

determine that an attorney of Mr. White’s experience 

spent an unreasonable amount of time preparing a document, but the document’s length, on its own, cannot be 

the Board’s only explanation for doing so.1 There must be 

 

1 The Board’s decision also mentions that Mr. 

White unreasonably billed time for clerical tasks associated with electronically filing the PFE. But there is no 

Case: 15-3233 Document: 39-2 Page: 5 Filed: 12/16/2016
6 HOWARD v. AIR FORCE

some nexus between the time spent preparing a document 

and the content of that document.2 

Third, when applying Hensley step two, the Board 

made a downward adjustment to the lodestar on the basis 

that Mr. Howard did not obtain all the relief he requested, 

which is contrary to Supreme Court precedent. As this 

court thoroughly explained in Bywaters v. United States, 

670 F.3d 1221, 1228−30 (Fed. Cir. 2012), post-Hensley 

Supreme Court decisions cabin the discretion to adjust 

the lodestar based on results obtained. Indeed, Bywaters 

makes clear that a downward reduction to the lodestar 

should only occur in rare and exceptional cases and a fee 

award may not be adjusted based on a factor that is 

already subsumed within the lodestar. See id. at 

1228−31; see also Perdue v. Kenny, 559 U.S. 542, 552−54

(2010). The Board may exclude from the fee award hours 

Mr. Howard spent litigating an unsuccessful claim, Hensley, 461 U.S. at 441, but to do so, it must either explain 

why the case is rare and exceptional (if applying an 

adjustment to the lodestar) or exclude those hours when 

calculating the lodestar. See Bywaters, 670 F.3d at 1231; 

see also Perdue v. Kenny, 559 U.S. 542, 552−54 (2010).

Here, the Board did neither. It calculated the appropriate lodestar to account for the result Mr. Howard 

obtained. Yet, the Board’s decision does not contain any 

explanation as to how this matter concerns a rare and 

exceptional case. Therefore, its downward reduction to 

the lodestar was not in accordance with law. 

 

indication of how many of the fifty-six disallowed hours 

were associated with those clerical tasks. See P.A. 11−12. 

2 The Board relied upon “the same reasons” to reduce the hours associated with four other filings by a total 

of twenty-six hours. P.A. 12. 

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HOWARD v. AIR FORCE 7

For those three reasons, we vacate and remand for 

further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 

VACATED AND REMANDED 

COSTS 

Costs to petitioner. 

Case: 15-3233 Document: 39-2 Page: 7 Filed: 12/16/2016