Opinion ID: 5288715
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Time Spent on Work Connected to Other Cases.

Text: The district court categorically excluded 43.75 hours relating to work done by the plaintiff's lawyer in connection with the Reyes and Márquez matters. This work included preparing the plaintiff for both his deposition in the Márquez litigation and his testimony at the Reyes trial. It also included the lawyer's attendance at the Reyes trial. Even though the district court acknowledge[d] that the strength vel non of Plaintiff's testimony in those cases weighed directly on [his] ability to secure a settlement in the instant case, it nonetheless concluded — as a categorical matter — that work done in one case is not properly recovered in a distinct case under a fee-shifting statute. The district court's view is not without some support in the case law. In Barrett v. Salt Lake County, the Tenth Circuit held that a prevailing Title VII plaintiff may not recover attorneys' fees for time spent in navigating the employer's optional grievance process even if such work was useful and of a type ordinarily necessary to secure the final result obtained from the litigation. 754 F.3d 864, 870 (10th Cir. 2014) (internal - 14 - quotations omitted) (quoting Pennsylvania v. Del. Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air (Delaware Valley), 478 U.S. 546, 561 (1986)). There, the court decided that the useful-and-necessary standard does not apply to actions under Title VII. See id. at 870-71; cf. Binta B. ex rel. S.A. v. Gordon, 710 F.3d 608, 631 (6th Cir. 2013) ([W]e are troubled by the idea of ever permitting plaintiffs' counsel to receive fees for work performed in a completely separate case.). We do not agree. To determine the number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation, Hensley, 461 U.S. at 433, an inquiring court must look not to labels but, rather, to the nature of the work and its utility to the case at hand, see Delaware Valley, 478 U.S. at 561. That look is not constrained by the four corners of the particular case. See Nat'l Ass'n of Concerned Veterans v. Sec'y of Def., 675 F.2d 1319, 1335 (D.C. Cir. 1982). Instead, a court should award fees for all hours logged in connection with work that is 'useful and of a type ordinarily necessary' to secure the final result obtained from the litigation. Delaware Valley, 478 U.S. at 561 (quoting Webb v. Bd. of Educ., 471 U.S. 234, 243 (1985)); see Hutchinson ex rel. Julien v. Patrick, 636 F.3d 1, 15 (1st Cir. 2011). This standard controls even when that work implicates some other case. See Schneider v. Colegio de Abogados de P.R., 187 F.3d 30, 32-33 (1st Cir. 1999) (per curiam) (applying the useful and of a type - 15 - ordinarily necessary standard to work done in the [Puerto Rico] courts before the filing of the federal lawsuit). We see no reason why this useful-and-necessary standard should not apply in Title VII actions. The Supreme Court treats the standard as versatile, deploying it in cases implicating such disparate statutes as 42 U.S.C. § 1988, see Webb, 471 U.S. at 243, the Clean Air Act, see Delaware Valley, 478 U.S. at 561, and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, see Ray Haluch Gravel Co. v. Cent. Pension Fund of Int'l Union of Operating Eng'rs & Participating Emps., 571 U.S. 177, 189-90 (2014). And we have followed suit in a case under the Americans with Disabilities Act. See Hutchinson, 636 F.3d at 15. Concluding, as we do, that there is no principled basis for exempting Title VII cases from the reach of this standard, we hold that the standard applies to such cases. Accord Green v. Adm'rs of the Tulane Educ. Fund, 284 F.3d 642, 662 (5th Cir. 2002); Bobbitt v. Paramount Cap Mfg. Co., 942 F.2d 512, 514 (8th Cir. 1991). The upshot is that Title VII's fee-shifting provision, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(k), should be construed as treating all useful and ordinarily necessary legal work as performed for the litigation, even if the work was done outside the four corners of the particular case. Ray Haluch, 571 U.S. at 189. Building on this foundation, we hold that, in constructing the lodestar in a Title VII case, the district court may award attorneys' fees to a - 16 - prevailing plaintiff for time reasonably expended in connection with a separate but related case. To be compensable, though, the time expended must be devoted to work that is useful and of a type that is ordinarily considered necessary to the matter at hand.3 As the Ninth Circuit aptly put it, the award of fees should cover 'every item of service which, at the time rendered, would have been undertaken by a reasonably prudent lawyer to advance or protect [her] client's interest' in the case at bar. Armstrong v. Davis, 318 F.3d 965, 971 (9th Cir. 2003) (quoting Hasbrouck v. Texaco, Inc., 879 F.2d 632, 638 (9th Cir. 1989)). To say more on this point would be supererogatory. The district court's per se exclusion of counsel's time in connection with the Márquez and Reyes matters from the fee-award calculus constituted an error of law and must be reversed. On remand, the 3 Everything depends on context. On the one hand, preparing a client for his testimony in a separate but related case may well bear fruit (depending on the circumstances) when the client's own case is tried or when a settlement is in prospect. See Green, 284 F.3d at 662 (awarding Title VII plaintiff attorneys' fees for time spent on depositions in distinct workers' compensation suit because [t]he workers' compensation case made available to [the plaintiff]'s counsel information and discovery which was necessary to effectively litigate the Title VII claim); Campbell v. District of Columbia, 202 F. Supp. 3d 121, 134-35 (D.D.C. 2016) (awarding fee to civil rights plaintiff for time counsel spent on depositions in distinct but related action against other defendants when depositions . . . aided her attorneys' trial preparation and provided evidence for trial). On the other hand, sitting through an entire trial of a separate but related case in hopes that a nugget of new information will surface may well be over the top (depending on the circumstances) in terms of advancing the client's case. - 17 - district court should augment the fee award by allowing credit for all time reasonably spent by the plaintiff's counsel in performing useful and ordinarily necessary work in connection with those matters.