Source: https://casetext.com/case/fair-housing-council-v-landow
Timestamp: 2019-09-17 07:13:57
Document Index: 386790232

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1988', '§ 3601', '§ 1981', '§ 1988', '§ 1988', '§ 1988', '§ 1988', '§ 1988', 'art, 461']

Fair Housing Council v. Landow, 999 F.2d 92 | Casetext
Fair Housing Council v. Landow
999 F.2d 92 (4th Cir. 1993)
Fair Housing Councilv.Landow
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth CircuitJul 14, 1993
Roger E. Warin, Steptoe Johnson, Washington, DC, argued (Charles F. Monk, Diane Hollenshead Copes, Steptoe Johnson, John P. Relman, Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civ. Rights Under Law, on brief), for appellant.
David Robert Boyd, COMEY BOYD, Washington, DC, argued (Eugene J. Comey, David Ledecky, Comey Boyd, on brief), for appellees.
The Fair Housing Council of Greater Washington (the FHC) appeals the judgment of the district court awarding it only $20,000 in attorneys' fees pursuant to the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act of 1976, 42 U.S.C. § 1988. The FHC contends the district court abused its discretion by awarding such a small amount without first providing detailed findings. Nathan Landow and Landow Company (Landow) cross appeal the attorneys' fee award, arguing that the district court should have denied the FHC's fee petition in its entirety because the FHC requested an exorbitant amount of fees.
This appeal stems from the FHC's Motion for an Award of Attorneys' Fees and Expenses, filed soon after the FHC prevailed on part of its claims against Landow. In December 1986, the FHC and Christal Murray filed suit against Landow, alleging several violations of the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3601 et seq., and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1982. The complaint essentially alleged that Landow, as the owner of a residential apartment building in Bethesda, Maryland, and its employees, discriminated against Murray because of her race when offering rental housing opportunities.
In February 1988, the FHC again filed suit against Landow. The initial complaint contained two causes of action: (1) breach of the prior settlement agreement, and (2) violations of the Fair Housing Act and Civil Rights Act resulting from allegedly discriminatory treatment of Marita Turner by Landow and its employees. Within the first cause of action, the FHC alleged that Landow breached the settlement agreement by: (a) discriminating against blacks, and (b) failing to perform various affirmative acts required by the settlement agreement.
Following the district court's substantive decision in the Turner action, the FHC filed a motion requesting an award of attorneys' fees and expenses pursuant to the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act of 1976, 42 U.S.C. § 1988. In this motion, the FHC claimed it had incurred approximately $604,113 in attorneys' fees and expenses, but only sought to recover $537,113, excluding an unitemized $67,000 in fees not attributable to the claims on which it prevailed. However, the FHC's records for the billable hours spent during the entire Turner litigation did not identify the type of work and resulting fees which the FHC excluded from its fee request. In addition, the fee request failed to allocate the fees attributable to each claim against Landow. Instead, the FHC's time sheets provided only general descriptions of the work performed. For example, several items contained in the FHC's fee request included: 4.5 hours for "review discovery and draft discovery"; 4.75 hours for "preparation of answers to interrogatories"; and 4.75 hours for "document production." ( See generally, Joint Appendix (J.A.) 867-95).
This request also included fees incurred in litigating FHC's entitlement to fees.
In reviewing the FHC's fee request, the district court first held that the FHC could recover attorneys' fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 as a "prevailing party." When addressing the amount of fees which the FHC sought to recover, the district court observed "if there are motions for attorneys' fees and expenses that should be disallowed in their entirety simply because of the outrageously excessive amount requested, the pending motion would fit the bill." (J.A. 1118). However, because the district court "believe[d] that the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit would determine that a denial of any legal fees would constitute an abuse of discretion," the district court refused to deny the fee request in its entirety. (J.A. 1125). Nevertheless, the district court specifically noted "should this matter be appealed and the appellate court find that this court had discretion to deny all legal fees here, the award of legal fees made herein should be rescinded without remand." Id.
Landow does not challenge this holding on appeal.
In determining the appropriate amount of fees to be awarded, the district court refused to rely on the time sheets submitted by the FHC, opining "plaintiffs submitted professional time estimates are so grossly in excess of any realistic amount as to be unworthy of consideration, even as a starting point." (J.A. 1125). Because "[t]he breach of contract dispute, as it related to Landow's failures[,] was relatively simple and straightforward," the district court determined the appropriate fee award by estimating the amount of fees that would have been incurred for a "comparable simple contract dispute of less than two days' duration." Id. The district court estimated that such fees would total $20,000 and, therefore, awarded the FHC that amount in attorneys' fees.
In its cross appeal, Landow contends that a district court has the discretion to deny a request for attorneys' fees in its entirety when the amount of the request is "grossly excessive." (Appellee's Brief at 15). In support, Landow relies primarily on Sun Publishing Company, Inc. v. Mecklenburg News, Inc., 823 F.2d 818, 819 (4th Cir. 1987), where this court recognized that "a request for attorney's fees, which is so exorbitant as to shock the conscience of the court, may be denied without a [detailed analysis]." In response, the FHC claims that Sun Publishing only applies to antitrust litigation and, in civil rights litigation, a district court may not deny a fee request in its entirety merely because it is excessive. In support, the FHC relies on Disabled in Action v. Mayor City Council, 685 F.2d 881, 883 (4th Cir. 1982), where this court announced:
In civil rights litigation, 42 U.S.C. § 1988 states, in relevant part, "the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party ... a reasonable attorney's fee...." (emphasis added). As part of this discretion, other circuits allow a district court to deny a request for attorneys' fees in its entirety when the amount of fees requested by the prevailing party is so outrageously excessive as to shock the conscience of the court. The leading case on this issue arose out of the Seventh Circuit. Brown v. Stackler, 612 F.2d 1057 (7th Cir. 1980).
Id. At least one other circuit adopted this principle in the civil rights context. Lewis v. Kendrick, 944 F.2d 949, 957-58 (1st Cir. 1991) (When plaintiff prevailed on minor portion of claim, failure to separate fees for factually separate claims warranted total denial of attorneys' fees.).
We find the rationale of the Stackler court very persuasive in the context of the circumstances of the instant fee petition. Thus, we hold that a district court may, in its discretion, deny a request for attorneys' fees in its entirety when the request, submitted pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988, is so outrageously excessive it "shock[s] the conscience of the court." Sun Publishing, 823 F.2d at 819. In reaching this conclusion, we reject the FHC's claim that a total denial of attorneys' fees is inappropriate in civil rights litigation because of the need to "encourage able attorneys to represent meritorious civil rights claimants with relatively small damage claims." (Appellant's Reply and Answering Brief at 14) (quotation and citation omitted). We believe the rule adopted today does not encroach on this laudable goal in the slightest. It simply telegraphs a signal to attorneys, such as those representing the FHC before us, to act responsibly when submitting petitions for attorneys' fees. Therefore, we join the First and Seventh Circuits in recognizing discretion in the district courts to deny a fee request in its entirety in civil rights litigation when the amount requested is so excessive it shocks the conscience of the court.
We also believe this holding does not conflict with Disabled in Action, 685 F.2d at 886. The Disabled in Action court did not address situations where the fee request is so outrageously excessive it "shock[s] the conscience of the court." Sun Publishing, 823 F.2d at 819. Instead, the district court in that case only found that the original fee request included items that were "excessive, unnecessary and unreasonable." Disabled in Action, 685 F.2d at 886.
In determining the amount of attorneys' fees which a prevailing party may recover under 42 U.S.C. § 1988, the district court must consider "the degree of the plaintiff's overall success." Farrar v. Hobby, 506 U.S. ___, ___, 113 S.Ct. 566, 574, 121 L.Ed.2d 494 (1992). Thus, if the plaintiff only succeeded on claims that encompassed "distinctly different ... facts and legal theories," from the claims on which the plaintiff lost, the "work on [the] unsuccessful claim[s] cannot be deemed to have been expended in pursuit of the ultimate result achieved." Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 434, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 1940, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983). Moreover, "if the district court determines that the unsuccessful claims ... were indeed unrelated to the successful ones, the burden of showing which hours are recoverable for work on the successful claims will of course rest with the fee applicant." Buffington v. Baltimore County, 913 F.2d 113, 128 (4th Cir.), reh'g denied (1990). In addition, "the court is entitled to expect that the applicant's records will provide some guidance in identifying recoverable hours." Id.
In summary, the fee petition in the present case contained several serious deficiencies. First, despite obtaining only limited success, the FHC excluded only a small portion of its fees from its petition and sought to recover an amount of fees so outrageously excessive it shocked the conscience of the court. Second, the FHC submitted a fee application which failed to specifically allocate the amount of fees attributable to the distinct claims on which it prevailed or to detail the fees which the FHC excluded from its petition. These factors give us every indication that the attorneys representing the FHC intended to submit an outrageously excessive fee petition in the hope that the district court would at least award some, preferably high, percentage of the requested fees. We believe Congress did not intend to foster such gamesmanship when it enacted the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act of 1976. Rather, the clear intent of Congress was to provide only reasonable fees to prevailing parties. Our decision today seeks to further that purpose by encouraging attorneys at the outset to request only reasonable fees and to provide the necessary assistance to the district court for determining a reasonable fee. In the present case, because the FHC's fee petition completely ignored these principles, we think the district court would not have abused its discretion by denying the FHC's fee request in its entirety. We, therefore, accept the district court's invitation to deny the FHC's fee request completely.