Opinion ID: 199377
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Anatomy of the Award.

Text: 30 Under most federal fee-shifting statutes, including the Fees Act, the trial judge must determine the number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 433. In implementing this lodestar approach, the judge calculates the time counsel spent on the case, subtracts duplicative, unproductive, or excessive hours, and then applies prevailing rates in the community (taking into account the qualifications, experience, and specialized competence of the attorneys involved). Lipsett, 975 F.2d at 937; United States v. Metro. Dist. Comm'n, 847 F.2d 12, 15-17 (1st Cir. 1988); Grendel's Den, Inc. v. Larkin, 749 F.2d 945, 950-51 (1st Cir. 1984). 31 In fashioning fee awards, the attorneys' contemporaneous billing records constitute the usual starting point, but the court's discretion is by no means shackled by those records. For example, it is the court's prerogative (indeed, its duty) to winnow out excessive hours, time spent tilting at windmills, and the like. Coutin, 124 F.3d at 337. By the same token, the court may take guidance from, but is not bound by, an attorney's standard billing rate. See Brewster v. Dukakis, 3 F.3d 488, 492-93 (1st Cir. 1993). 32 Chief Judge Laffitte followed this procedure. He started with the time compilations submitted by the plaintiffs' lawyers. Despite the attorneys' representations that the compilations only included time spent in connection with their efforts to prove the infirmity of Regulation 29, the court sharply reduced the number of hours claimed for researching this issue prior to June 19, 1995 (the date on which the plaintiffs filed the original complaint that contained no mention of Regulation 29). 5 Turning to the other side of the grid, the court ratcheted some of the billing rates downward to correspond more closely with local standards. See Adcock-Ladd v. Sec'y of Treas., 227 F.3d 343, 350 (6th Cir. 2000) (holding that reasonable hourly rates should be set by reference to rates in the court's vicinage rather than in the lawyer's region of origin). The court then multiplied the adjusted hours by the adjusted rates to ascertain fees attributable to the work of each of the four attorneys, aggregating those four figures to arrive at the amount of the award. 33