Case Name: Douglas V. COONRAD, Plaintiff, v. Honorable Peter VAN METRE, Judge, Defendant
Court: Iowa Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Iowa
Decision Date: 1985-02-13
Citations: 362 N.W.2d 197
Docket Number: No. 83-1419
Parties: Douglas V. COONRAD, Plaintiff, v. Honorable Peter VAN METRE, Judge, Defendant.
Judges: All Justices concur except SCHULTZ, J., who concurs specially, and UHLENHOPP, J., who dissents, and REYNOLDSON, C.J., and McCORMICK, J., join the dissent.
Reporter: North Western Reporter 2d
Volume: 362
Pages: 197–205

Head Matter:
Douglas V. COONRAD, Plaintiff, v. Honorable Peter VAN METRE, Judge, Defendant.
No. 83-1419.
Supreme Court of Iowa.
Feb. 13, 1985.
Douglas V. Coonrad, pro se.
Thomas J. Miller, Atty. Gen., Roxann M. Ryan, Asst. Atty. Gen., and James C. Bauch, Co. Atty., for defendant.

Opinion:
McGIVERIN, Justice.
Plaintiff Douglas V. Coonrad brings two consolidated certiorari actions to review fee allowances made by the defendant district court under Iowa Code sections 815.7 and 663A.5 (1983) for his services in representing several indigent persons in various unrelated criminal prosecutions and postcon-viction proceedings. We annul the writs.
The judges of the first judicial district of Iowa maintain a list of attorneys who have expressed their willingness to accept court appointments to represent indigent defendants in criminal cases and indigent applicants in postconviction proceedings. In Black Hawk County, attorneys may voluntarily place their names on a list that is maintained by the court administrator. Mr. Coonrad is an attorney on this list. He was appointed by the district court to represent persons in four criminal cases and two postconviction actions in Black Hawk County. Upon completion of the cases, he presented to the court his claims for fees in those matters, listing his expenses and the hours spent in research, travel, conferences, and other activities. In each case he requested compensation at the rate of $65 per hour.
District Rule 1 of the first judicial district, which comprises eleven counties in northeast Iowa, pertains to fees for court-appointed attorneys in criminal cases. Its paragraphs four through six read as follows:
4. In fixing the fee the Court shall exercise its independent judgment in determining the extent of reasonably necessary services. See Hulse v. Wifvat, 306 N.W.2d 707 (Iowa 1981).
5. The Court shall then determine the compensation to be allowed for all services found to have been reasonably necessary in each case. The compensation shall be the ordinary and customary charges for like services in the community. In determining the compensation the Court shall consider the following: (a) the time necessarily spent; (b) the nature and extent of service; (c) the possible punishment involved; (d) the difficulty of handling and importance of the issues; (e) the responsibility assumed and results obtained; (f) the standing and experience of the attorney in the profession; (g) the customary charges for similar services, and (h) the certainty of payment.
6. As a guideline only, the sum of $40 per hour is established as the average, ordinary, and customary charges for like services in this District. This hourly rate is a composite of the charges for the different services involved in such cases. These differences include, for example, the lower rates ordinarily charged for legal research and briefing and higher rates charged for actual trial time.
Various judges ruled on plaintiff's fee claims. They allowed his expenses and awarded further compensation at the rate of $40 per hour, except for one case in which $45 per hour was awarded.
Plaintiff objected to these allowances. He sought $65 per hour (plus expenses) as compensation, and requested reconsideration of his claims. He accompanied his requests with several affidavits from local attorneys practicing in criminal defense regarding their usual fees for such work on behalf of non-indigent clients. These fees ranged from $50 to $75 per hour; several of the attorneys stated that their hourly rates might in some cases vary up or down from the rates indicated.
The chief judge of the judicial district ordered defendant judge Peter Van Metre to hear and rule on the requests for reconsideration in all six cases, although Judge Van Metre had initially set the fee in only one of the cases. Plaintiff agreed to this procedure.
On reconsideration, the court refused to alter the prior fee allowances. To review the rulings, plaintiff petitioned this court for writs of certiorari, which were granted and then consolidated into this proceeding.
Certiorari lies when the district court is alleged to have exceeded its jurisdiction or to have otherwise acted illegally. Van Meter v. Hellwege, 356 N.W.2d 541, 548 (Iowa 1984). Plaintiff does not, of course, urge any jurisdictional issue as a basis for relief. He contends that the district court acted illegally in refusing to alter the fee allowances from those originally set.
Plaintiff relies on Iowa Code section 815.-7, which provides for compensation for court-appointed criminal defense attorneys. According to the statute, such compensation "shall be the ordinary and customary charges for like services in the community to be decided in each case by a judge of the district court[.]" Plaintiff contends that the affidavits he has obtained show that the "ordinary and customary charges" for criminal defense representation in the community are higher than those allowed him by the court, and that the court's fee allowances were based on an erroneous legal standard, i.e., District Rule 1 rather than plaintiffs evidence regarding fees charged by local attorneys.
We do not agree that District Rule 1 is an erroneous legal standard for basing court-appointed attorney fees. The rule cites Hulse v. Wifvat, 306 N.W.2d 707 (Iowa 1981), in paragraph four. In paragraph five, it enumerates each of the eight factors discussed in Hulse as bearing on fee awards under Code section 815.7. See 306 N.W.2d at 710-12. In paragraph six, it establishes the $40-per-hour fee guideline in the judicial district or community in response to those factors. Because it is only a guideline, it can be departed from, as it was in one of the cases now before us.
The principal valuation issue presented in Hulse was whether the phrase "ordinary and customary charges for like services," contained in section 815.7, envisions a discounted fee as a consequence of an attorney's professional responsibility to assist the poor. We answered that question in the negative. We also rejected in Hulse the suggestion that in fixing compensation under the statute the court's inquiry concerning "charges for like services" should be directed only to cases involving indigent defendants.
We do not view Hulse as an indication that courts, in establishing reasonable compensation under section 815.7, may now consider only the amounts which are customarily charged by attorneys in the representation of non-indigent clients. That approach is suspect because the number of criminal cases involving non-indigent clients may represent a relatively small proportion of the felony criminal cases in many communities. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Report to the Nation on Crime and Justice, (October 1983) at 57. As a result, the situations of both the attorneys and the clients in such cases may be sufficiently uncharacteristic of the majority of criminal cases so as to be of little guidance in determining what is reasonable compensation for attorneys representing indigent clients.
We believe it should be the goal of the courts in applying section 815.7 to establish a reasonable fee for the services performed in the particular case subject only to the requirement that compensation, once determined, shall not be discounted based on the attorney's professional responsibility towards the poor. We are certain that the judges of the district court have accumulated a considerable amount of experience in accomplishing this result in the years which have elapsed since the Hulse decision was filed. For this reason, we are reluctant to dispute the collective judgment of the several judges of the first judicial district that the use of a presumptively reasonable hourly rate as a guideline is a useful tool in dealing with a high volume of such claims in an expeditious manner.
Paragraphs four through six of the district rule appear to be a distillation and application of Hulse by the judges of the first judicial district based on the holding of Hulse, the conditions prevailing in the district, and the judges' expertise in the area of attorney fees. See Parrish v. Denato, 262 N.W.2d 281, 285 (Iowa 1978). In view of its incorporation of Hulse in every important respect, we do not believe that the rule constitutes an erroneous legal standard for determination of fees. The guideline stated in paragraph six of the rule represents a collective exercise of discretion on the part of the judges of the first district. Because a correct legal standard was used in formulating that guideline, our review is limited to whether the guideline, or the district court's application of it in the cases at issue, constitutes an abuse of discretion. See Walters v. Herrick, 351 N.W.2d 794, 796 (Iowa 1984).
On this record we are unwilling to conclude that the guideline itself represents an abuse of discretion. The affidavits collected by plaintiff show a fee range of $50 to $75 per hour for similar work done by local attorneys for private-pay clients. In view of the "certainty of payment" consideration that we have held applicable to determination of fees for court-appointed attorneys, see Hulse, 306 N.W.2d at 712; Mathison v. Young, 333 N.W.2d 477, 479-80 (Iowa 1983), we do not conclude that the $40-per-hour guideline is so low as to be an abuse of discretion.
Nor do we find that the district court's adherence to the guideline in the cases at issue was an abuse of discretion. Although plaintiff offered some evidence as to his standing and experience as a criminal lawyer, no evidence was offered regarding the other factors enumerated in Hulse, such as difficulty of the cases involved here, or the results obtained in each of those cases. Plaintiff asserted only that the court applied the wrong hourly rate to his claims. No other Hulse factor is pointed to by plaintiff as being disregarded by the court. The evidence by which plaintiff hoped to induce the court to depart from the Rule 1 guideline was not so overwhelming as to render the court's general adherence to the guideline, with one exception in plaintiff's favor, an abuse of discretion.
We believe it is also pertinent that attorneys in Black Hawk County are under no compulsion to accept court appointments for indigent criminal defense work. These appointments are made from a list of attorneys who have voluntarily expressed a desire to undertake such work. The attorneys know that the guideline for payment in these cases will be $40 per hour unless special circumstances are shown. Their reasonable expectations are satisfied when they are awarded at least $40 per hour, and perhaps more, for their services, as occurred here. This situation is akin to a contract system for indigent criminal defense services. Nothing in Hulse or in Iowa Code section 815.7 forbids such a system if the fee guideline itself and the exercise of the court's discretion in applying the guideline do not produce a result which clearly contravenes the statute.
Plaintiff argues that the district court, in refusing to alter the fee awards, did not cite Hulse or any of its progeny. This does not control our decision. We do note that one judge, who initially made an award in one of the cases at issue, recited the Hulse factors in his ruling as having been considered before fixing the fee. However, it was not incumbent upon that judge or the defendant judge to demonstrate compliance with Hulse. Walters v. Herrick, 351 N.W.2d at 797. The burden of proof was upon plaintiff to show that the court did not apply the standard of Hulse. Id. We conclude plaintiff has not met that burden. Because we also conclude that the court did not abuse its discretion in applying the Hulse standard to the facts before it, the writs of certiorari are annulled.
Our decision today does not preclude the possibility that other systems of compensation for court-appointed attorneys may be permissible under Iowa Code section 815.7 that will provide competent representation to indigents in criminal cases, prevent vast disparity in fees allowed in the various counties throughout the state, and be fair to the attorneys providing the services and the taxpayers who pay the fees awarded.
WRITS ANNULLED.
All Justices concur except SCHULTZ, J., who concurs specially, and UHLENHOPP, J., who dissents, and REYNOLDSON, C.J., and McCORMICK, J., join the dissent.