Opinion ID: 186823
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Fees Generated by Post-1998 Discovery

Text: 26 DOC's principal claim is that Judicial Watch should not have been awarded any fees and costs for unsuccessful discovery efforts after December 22, 1998. More precisely, DOC argues that [i]f a plaintiff achieves only partial success, it can be an abuse of discretion to award full fees. Appellant's Br. at 13. In DOC's view, after December 22, 1998, Judicial Watch achieved no measure of success that was relevant to the final outcome of the case, Appellant's Br. at 14, so no fees should have been awarded for any work done after that date. We disagree. 27 Apparently intending to harken to the Court's holding in Hensley, DOC's theory obviously rests on the assumption that the post-1998 discovery was unrelated to Judicial Watch's principal FOIA claim, because it was undertaken in pursuit of distinctly different claims for relief and based on different facts and legal theories. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434-35, 103 S.Ct. 1933. On this view of the case, DOC suggests that FOIA's limit on awards to prevailing parties requires that these unrelated claims be treated as if they had been raised in separate lawsuits, and therefore no fee may be awarded for services on the unsuccessful claim. Id. DOC's premise is wrong, and its reliance on Hensley is misplaced. 28 On the record in this case, the post-1998 discovery cannot reasonably be viewed as divorced from or unrelated to Judicial Watch's principal FOIA claim. The District Court certainly did not intend to terminate the FOIA litigation when it granted interim relief on December 22, 1998. See Interim Relief Decision, 34 F.Supp.2d at 57 (holding that the case will now proceed with limited discovery under the supervision of a Magistrate Judge). The District Court determined that, due to DOC's misconduct in its initial response to Judicial Watch's FOIA request, a closely monitored second search by DOC would not suffice. The court therefore ordered a second search by DOC and appointed a Magistrate Judge to oversee further discovery. See Partial Summary Judgment Decision, 34 F.Supp.2d at 46. This action was taken to ensure that Judicial Watch receive any responsive documents that had been removed from DOC's premises but not destroyed. In other words, the post-1998 discovery was authorized solely to allow Judicial Watch to pursue matters directly related to its FOIA claim. The District Court's December 22, 1998 Partial Summary Judgment Decision and Interim Relief Decision did not initiate a new action pursuant to which Judicial Watch was authorized to pursue distinctly different claims for relief ... based on different facts and legal theories, Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434, 103 S.Ct. 1933, divorced from the complaint then before the court. DOC's suggestion to the contrary is specious. 29 Indeed, as counsel for DOC acknowledged during oral argument, the partial summary judgment issued in Judicial Watch's favor on December 22, 1998 did not result in a final appealable order. See Liberty Mut. Ins. Co. v. Wetzel, 424 U.S. 737, 744, 96 S.Ct. 1202, 47 L.Ed.2d 435 (1976) ([Grants] of partial summary judgment ... are by their terms interlocutory, and where assessment of damages or awarding of other relief remains to be resolved have never been considered to be `final' ....) (citation omitted). Had more documents been uncovered after December 1998, the District Court could have entered a further judgment in favor of Judicial Watch on its FOIA claim. The claim on the merits of Judicial Watch's FOIA claim did not terminate until September 2004, when the District Court granted DOC's March 2000 motion. 30 Rather, as the District Court made clear, the second search and related discovery were required to give effect to the court's order granting Judicial Watch a full and fair opportunity, through additional discovery, to reconstruct or discover documents ... destroyed or removed ... during the DOC's first search. Fees Decision, 384 F.Supp.2d at 171. In other words, the post-1998 discovery was intended to facilitate Judicial Watch's lawful pursuit of its principal FOIA claim. In the analogous situation where fees are incurred monitoring compliance with a consent decree, the Supreme Court instructs that measures necessary to enforce the remedy ordered by the District Court cannot be divorced from the matters upon which [the plaintiff] prevailed in securing the consent decree. Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air, 478 U.S. 546, 558-59, 106 S.Ct. 3088, 92 L.Ed.2d 439 (1986); see also Sierra Club v. Hankinson, 351 F.3d 1358, 1361-64 (11th Cir.2003) (A district court may award fees for post-judgment monitoring of a consent decree.); Garrity v. Sununu, 752 F.2d 727, 738-39 (1st Cir.1984) (same). Contrary to DOC's suggestion, the post-1998 discovery was not ordered by the trial court to allow Judicial Watch to pursue new claims. 31 On the record at hand, we hold that the District Court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that the post-1998 discovery was intended to be in furtherance of, and therefore directly related to, the FOIA claim upon which Judicial Watch substantially prevailed. The District Court did not err in concluding that at least some of the work related to the post-1998 discovery could be counted in the calculation of attorney fees due to Judicial Watch. 32