Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/489/87
Timestamp: 2017-05-27 05:09:36
Document Index: 294675152

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1983', '§ 1988', '§ 1983', '§ 1988', '§ 1988', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1988', '§ 1988', 'art, 461', 'art, 461', '§ 1983', '§ 1988', '§ 1988', '§ 1983', 'art, 461', '§ 706']

Arthur J. BLANCHARD, Petitioner v. James BERGERON et al. | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
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489 U.S. 87 (109 S.Ct. 939, 103 L.Ed.2d 67)
Argued: Nov. 28, 1988.
Decided: Feb. 21, 1989.
[HTML] Syllabus After a jury awarded petitioner $10,000 in damages on his claim that respondent sheriff's deputy had beaten him and thereby deprived him of his civil rights under 42 U.S.C. 1983, the Federal District Court awarded him $7,500 in attorney's fees under 42 U.S.C. 1988, which provides that the court, "in its discretion, may allow . . . a reasonable attorney's fee" to a prevailing party in certain federal civil rights actions, including those under § 1983. The Court of Appeals reduced the fee award to $4,000, ruling that petitioner's 40% contingent-fee arrangement with his lawyer served as a cap on the amount of fees that could be awarded. The court also found that hours billed for the time of law clerks and paralegals were not compensable since they would be included within the contingency fee.
Held: 1. An attorney's fee allowed under § 1988 is not limited to the amount provided in the plaintiff's contingent-fee arrangement with his counsel. To hold otherwise would be inconsistent with the statute, which broadly requires all defendants to pay a reasonable fee to all prevailing plaintiffs if ordered to do so by the court acting in its sound judgment and in light of all the circumstances of the case. This Court's decisions have required that the initial estimate of a reasonable court-awarded fee be calculated by multiplying prevailing billing rates by the hours reasonably expended on successful claims, which "lodestar" figure may then be adjusted by other factors. The Court has never suggested that any one such factor should substitute for the lodestar approach. In fact, the lodestar figure is entitled to a strong presumption of reasonableness and prevents a "windfall" for attorneys in § 1983 actions by guaranteeing that they receive only the reasonable worth of the services rendered. Thus, as § 1988's legislative history confirms, a private fee arrangement is but one of the many factors to be considered and cannot, standing alone, impose an automatic limitation on the exercise of the trial judge's discretion, which is central to the operation of the statute. Moreover, such a limitation might place an undesirable emphasis on the importance of the recovery of damages, whereas § 1988 makes no distinction between damages actions and equitable suits but was intended to encourage meritorious claims, irrespective of their nature, because of the benefits of civil rights litigation for the named plaintiff and for society at large. Fee awards in § 1983 damages cases should not be modeled upon the contingent-fee arrangements used in personal injury litigation, which benefits only the individual plaintiff. Pp. 91-96.
* Petitioner Arthur J. Blanchard brought suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana alleging violations of his civil rights under 42 U.S.C. 1983. Blanchard asserted that he was beaten by Sheriff's Deputy James Bergeron while he was in Oudrey's Odyssey Lounge. Blanchard brought his claim against the deputy, the sheriff, and the St. Martin Parish Sheriff's Department. He also joined with his civil rights claim a state-law negligence claim against the above defendants and against the owners and a manager of the lounge and the lounge itself. The case was tried and a jury awarded Blanchard compensatory damages in the amount of $5,000 and punitive damages in the amount of $5,000 on his § 1983 claim. Under the provisions of 42 U.S.C. 1988, which permit the award of attorney's fees to a prevailing party in certain federal civil rights actions,
under which the attorney was to receive 40% of any damages awarded should petitioner prevail in his suit. While recognizing that other Circuits had different views, the court held that it was bound by its prior decision in Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc., 488 F.2d 714, 718 (1974), to rule that the contingency-fee agreement "serves as a cap on the amount of attorney's fee to be awarded." 831 F.2d 563, 564 (CA5 1987). The court further found that hours billed for the time of law clerks and paralegals were not compensable since they would be included within the contingency fee. Ibid. Accordingly, the court limited the fee award to 40% of the $10,000 damages award$4,000.
Because other Courts of Appeals have concluded that a § 1988 fee award should not be limited by a contingent-fee agreement between the attorney and his client,
we granted certiorari to resolve the conflict, 487 U.S. 1217, 108 S.Ct. 2869, 101 L.Ed.2d 904 (1988). We now reverse.
In many past cases considering the award of attorney's fees under § 1988, we have turned our attention to Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc., supra, a case decided before the enactment of the Civil Rights Attorney's Fee Award Act of 1976. As we stated in Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 429-431, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 1938, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983), Johnson provides guidance to Congress' intent because both the House and Senate Reports refer to the 12 factors set forth in Johnson for assessing the reasonableness of an attorney's fee award.
The Senate Report, in particular, refers to three District Court decisions that "correctly applied" the 12 factors laid out in Johnson.
" 'Whether or not a litigant agreed to pay a fee and in what amount is not decisive. Conceivably, a litigant might agree to pay his counsel a fixed dollar fee. This might be even more than the fee eventually allowed by the court. Or he might agree to pay his lawyer a percentage contingent fee that would be greater than the fee the court might ultimately set. Such arrangements should not determine the court's decision. The criterion for the court is not what the parties agree but what is reasonable.' " 488 F.2d, at 718 (quoting Clark v. American Marine Corp., 320 F.Supp. 709, 711 (ED La.1970), aff'd 437 F.2d 959 (CA5 1971)).
Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983), directed lower courts to make an initial estimate of reasonable attorney's fees by applying prevailing billing rates to the hours reasonably expended on successful claims. And we have said repeatedly that "the initial estimate of a reasonable attorney's fee is properly calculated by multiplying the number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation times a reasonable hourly rate." Blum v. Stenson, 465 U.S. 886, 888, 104 S.Ct. 1541, 1544, 79 L.Ed.2d 891 (1984). The courts may then adjust this lodestar calculation by other factors. We have never suggested that a different approach is to be followed in cases where the prevailing party and his (or her) attorney have executed a contingent-fee agreement. To the contrary, in Hensley and in subsequent cases, we have adopted the lodestar approach as the centerpiece of attorney's fee awards. The Johnson factors may be relevant in adjusting the lodestar amount, but no one factor is a substitute for multiplying reasonable billing rates by a reasonable estimation of the number of hours expended on the litigation. In Blum, we rejected, as contrary to congressional intent, the notion that fees are to be calculated on a cost-based standard. Further, as we said in Blum, "Congress did not intend the calculation of fee awards to vary depending on whether plaintiff was represented by private counsel or by a nonprofit legal services organization." 465 U.S., at 894, 104 S.Ct., at 1547. That a nonprofit legal services organization may contractually have agreed not to charge any fee of a civil rights plaintiff does not preclude the award of a reasonable fee to a prevailing party in a § 1983 action, calculated in the usual way.
It is clear that Congress "intended that the amount of fees awarded . . . be governed by the same standards which prevail in other types of equally complex Federal litigation . . . and not be reduced because the rights involved may be non-pecuniary in nature." S.Rep. No. 94-1011, at 6, U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1976, p. 5913. "The purpose of § 1988 is to ensure 'effective access to the judicial process' for persons with civil rights grievances." Hensley, supra, 461 U.S., at 429, 103 S.Ct., at 1937, quoting H.R.Rep. No. 94-1558, p. 1 (1976). Even when considering the award of attorney's fees under the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. 7401 et seq., the Court has applied the § 1988 approach, stating: "A strong presumption that the lodestar figure the product of reasonable hours times a reasonable raterepresents a 'reasonable fee' is wholly consistent with the rationale behind the usual fee-shifting statute. . . ." Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air, 478 U.S. 546, 565, 106 S.Ct. 3088, 3098, 92 L.Ed.2d 439 (1986).
It should also be noted that we have not accepted the contention that fee awards in § 1983 damages cases should be modeled upon the contingent-fee arrangements used in personal injury litigation. "We reject the notion that a civil rights action for damages constitutes nothing more than a private tort suit benefiting only the individual plaintiffs whose rights were violated. Unlike most private tort litigants, a civil rights plaintiff seeks to vindicate important civil and constitutional rights that cannot be valued solely in monetary terms." Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561, 574, 106 S.Ct. 2686, 2694, 91 L.Ed.2d 466 (1986).
Blanchard also complains of the failure of the court below to award fees in compensation for the time of paralegals and law clerks. Because the Court of Appeals held that recovery for legal fees was to be limited by the contingency agreement, that court never addressed the issue of separate billing for legal assistants. "Any hours 'billed' by law clerks or paralegals would also naturally be included within the contingency fee." 831 F.2d, at 564. Since we hold today that the contingency-fee arrangement does not control the award for attorney's fees, the determination of the total fee will be considered on remand. We reserve for another day the question whether legal assistants' fees should be included in the award.
I concur in the judgment and join the opinion of the Court except that portion which rests upon detailed analysis of the Fifth Circuit's opinion in Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc., 488 F.2d 714 (1974), and the District Court decisions in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 66 F.R.D. 483 (WDNC 1975); Stanford Daily v. Zurcher, 64 F.R.D. 680 (ND Cal.1974); and Davis v. County of Los Angeles, 8 EPD ¶ 9444 (CD Cal.1974). See ante, at 93-93. The Court carefully examines those opinions, separating holding from dictum, much as a lower court would study our opinions in order to be faithful to our guidance. The justification for this role reversal is that the Senate and House Committee Reports on the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act of 1976 referred approvingly to Johnson, and the Senate Report alone referred to the three District Court opinions as having "correctly applied" Johnson. The Court resolves the difficulty that Johnson contradicts the three District Court opinions on the precise point at issue here by concluding in effect that the analysis inJohnson was dictum, whereas in the three District Court opinions it was a holding. Despite the fact that the House Report referred only to Johnson, and made no mention of the District Court cases, the Court "doubts that Congress embraced this aspect of Johnson, for it pointed to the three District Court cases in which the factors are 'correctly applied.' " Ante, at 92.
I decline to participate in this process. It is neither compatible with our judicial responsibility of assuring reasoned, consistent, and effective application of the statutes of the United States, nor conducive to a genuine effectuation of congressional intent, to give legislative force to each snippet of analysis, and even every case citation, in committee reports that are increasingly unreliable evidence of what the voting Members of Congress actually had in mind. By treating Johnson and the District Court trilogy as fully authoritative, the Court today expands what I regard as our cases' excessive preoccupation with themand with the 12-factor Johnson analysis in particular. See, e.g., Blum v. Stenson, 465 U.S. 886, 893-896, 900, 104 S.Ct. 1541, 1546-1547, 1549, 79 L.Ed.2d 891 (1984); Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 429-432, 434-435, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 1937-1938, 1939-1940, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983). This expansion is all the more puzzling because I had thought that in the first Delaware Valley case, Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air, 478 U.S. 546, 106 S.Ct. 3088, 92 L.Ed.2d 439 (1986), we had acknowledged our emancipation from Johnson, see 478 U.S., at 563-565, 106 S.Ct., at 3097-3098. Indeed, the plurality opinion in the second Delaware Valley case, Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air, 483 U.S. 711, 723-724, 107 S.Ct. 3078, 3085-3086, 97 L.Ed.2d 585 (1987) (Delaware Valley II ), discussed Johnson and the other three cases almost exclusively by way of refuting arguments made in reliance upon them in Justice BRENNAN's separate opinion in Blum v. Stenson, supra, 465 U.S., at 902-903, 104 S.Ct., at 1550-1551. Moreover, the concurring opinion that formed the fifth vote for the judgment in Delaware Valley II did not discuss the four cases at all. 483 U.S., at 731-734, 107 S.Ct., at 3089-3091 (O'CONNOR, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Except for the few passages to which I object, today's opinion admirably follows our more recent approach of seeking to develop an interpretation of the statute that is reasonable, consistent, and faithful to its apparent purpose, rather than to achieve obedient adherence to cases cited in the committee reports. I therefore join the balance of the opinion.
The Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act of 1976, Pub.L. 94-559, 90 Stat. 2641, as set forth in 42 U.S.C. 1988 states:
The 12 factors set forth by the Johnson court for determining fee awards under § 706(k) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e-5(k) are: (1) the time and labor required; (2) the novelty and difficulty of the questions; (3) the skill requisite to perform the legal service properly; (4) the preclusion of other employment by the attorney due to acceptance of the case; (5) the customary fee; (6) whether the fee is fixed or contingent; (7) time limitations imposed by the client or the circumstances; (8) the amount involved and the results obtained; (9) the experience, reputation, and ability of the attorneys; (10) the "undesirability" of the case; (11) the nature and length of the professional relationship with the client; and (12) awards in similar cases. 488 F.2d, at 717-719.