Opinion ID: 754158
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: the prevailing party standard in post-judgment institutional reform litigation

Text: 54 We next turn to whether plaintiffs are prevailing parties in these various appeals.

55 In Glover III, this Court rejected the same prevailing party argument that is advanced by defendants here. We held that plaintiffs may rely on the trial court's 1985 order to establish that they are prevailing parties and, pursuant to that order, plaintiffs have succeeded on a significant issue. Glover III, supra, 934 F.2d at 716. We also held that moving for contempt to compel compliance with earlier District Court orders is a compensable post-judgment monitoring activity. Id. at 715-16. (citing Northcross v. Board of Education of Memphis City Schools, 611 F.2d 624, 637 (6th Cir.1979), cert. denied, 447 U.S. 911, 100 S.Ct. 2999, 64 L.Ed.2d 862 (1980)). In so holding, we rejected defendants' argument that prevailing party status was dependent upon the outcome of their appeal of the District Court's contempt findings. Id. We also upheld the award despite reversing the District Court in part because it interpreted its remedial order beyond the order's express terms in two areas. Id. at 712 (vocational training), 713 (work pass program). Thus, when plaintiffs seek fees for compliance monitoring, plaintiffs are not required to again establish prevailing party status, nor is the award dependent upon the outcome of an appeal. 56
57 Defendants rely heavily, if not exclusively, on our statement in Northcross in their argument that plaintiffs are not entitled to fees unless they prevail on each post-judgment dispute. There we stated, [t]he [1977] hearings [which involved plaintiffs' work defending a desegration plan from attack] were collateral to and distinct from the desegregation suit itself, which had been finally terminated in 1974, so had the plaintiffs failed to prevail on the merits the district court would have been justified in denying fees altogether. Northcross, 611 F.2d at 641. We believe that this reliance is misplaced for several reasons. First, because the Northcross plaintiffs prevailed in defending the remedy and because the Court held that plaintiffs are prevailing parties, this statement is dicta. Second, defending a remedy from collateral attack is indistinguishable from affirmatively moving for contempt to enforce compliance with the remedy because both activities share the same purpose of protecting court-ordered relief. See Jenkins v. State of Missouri, 127 F.3d 709, 717 (8th Cir.1997) (compliance monitoring, enforcement of the remedy, and defense of the remedy are generally viewed as necessary adjuncts to the initial litigation and compensable). Finally, the Northcross dicta relied upon by defendants is inconsistent with Glover III, which held that compliance monitoring is compensable regardless of the degree of success or the outcome of appeals. 58 Glover III does not however definitively answer how courts should handle the prevailing party issue when unsuccessful legal work for which fees are requested does not relate to compliance monitoring or otherwise protecting a remedy previously affirmed or not appealed. In such cases, we elect to follow the approach outlined recently by the Eight Circuit. 59 In an ongoing school desegregation case involving the Kansas City School District, the Eighth Circuit had occasion to examine the prevailing party issue when the Supreme Court struck down the use of certain remedial measures employed in the court-approved desegregation plan. Jenkins v. State of Missouri, supra. Because the Supreme Court's decision did not affect the district court's underlying holding that the State of Missouri had committed constitutional violations and was obligated to remedy those violations, the court found that the decision did not retroactively take away the Jenkins class's status as a prevailing party. Id., 127 F.3d at 714 (discussing Balark v. City of Chicago, 81 F.3d 658, 665 (7th Cir.1996)) (holding that prospective termination of a 10-year-old consent decree pursuant to Rule 60(b)--as opposed to reversal on direct appeal--did not deprive plaintiffs of prevailing party status, which they enjoyed for 10 years). The Eighth Circuit treated the prevailing party question as a threshold issue and went on to examine whether fees should be awarded for matters on which the plaintiff lost. Id. at 716. 60 The Jenkins court applied the paradigm of Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983), a case involving a civil rights plaintiff who had prevailed on some but not all issues, to the prevailing party issue surrounding post-judgment fees in institutional reform cases. Id. (citing Assoc. for Retarded Citizens v. Schafer, 83 F.3d 1008, 1010-12, (8th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 482, 136 L.Ed.2d 376 (1996)). The test asks first whether the issues in the post-judgment litigation are inextricably intertwined with those on which the plaintiff prevailed in the underlying suit or whether they are distinct. Id. at 717. Compliance monitoring, enforcement of the remedy, and defense of the remedy are generally viewed as necessary adjuncts to the initial litigation and compensable. Id. Other activities, such as efforts to expand the scope of the original relief obtained, may amount to the assertion of distinct new claims that cannot rest upon the prevailing party determination in the underlying case. Id. When the issues are intertwined, plaintiffs are entitled to fees, i.e., they maintain their prevailing party status. Id. at 718. If on the other hand, the issues are distinct, plaintiffs are entitled to fees only if they prevail on the separate issue. Id. at 717 (discussing Arvinger v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, 31 F.3d 196, 202 (4th Cir.1994) and Schafer, supra, which denied prevailing party status on strength of underlying litigation under these circumstances). In applying this analysis to the facts before it, the Jenkins court concluded that the issues that went up to the Supreme Court were related to the issues on which the Jenkins class prevailed as the plaintiffs were placed in the position of defending the scope of the district court's remedial authority. Id. at 719. 10 61

62 In yet another Glover appeal, appeal no. 96-1852, defendants raised the identical prevailing party issue with respect to the same Compliance Committee fees at issue here, albeit for a different time period. In our recently-issued decision, we held that plaintiffs were prevailing parties in these appeals by virtue of defendants' voluntary dismissal and that the work was otherwise compensable as post-judgment compliance monitoring. Glover V, supra, at 252. We therefore reject this portion of defendants' challenge.
63 The analysis of the termination appeal fee award is controlled by Glover III. Defendants do not argue that the work was unrelated to ensuring compliance with court orders or that the work was unrelated to the underlying issues on which plaintiffs prevailed. As the District Court found: [T]he relief sought amounted to a complete termination of the Remedial Plan. Work provided by plaintiffs' counsel on this issue was critically related to monitoring compliance with the judgment. 11 Rather, defendants argue that the prevailing party issue cannot be decided without awaiting the outcome of appeal no. 95-1521. As explained above, this argument was made and rejected once before. Glover III, 934 F.2d at 715-16. 64 Additionally, we vacated the judgment denying the motion to terminate in appeal no. 95-1521, and, in lieu of assessing whether substantial compliance has been achieved, we retained jurisdiction and remanded the matter to the District Court for a new determination of whether a disparity now exists between female and male inmates in educational and vocational opportunities in violation of the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and whether female inmates are presently being denied access to the courts in violation of the First Amendment. Glover V, supra, pp. 242-44. Given this outcome, we hold that plaintiffs have prevailed in appeal no. 95-1521. We further hold that this work qualifies as compensable post-judgment compliance monitoring because plaintiffs sought to protect the remedy ordered by the District Court for the equal protection violations and access to court violations it found so many years ago.
65 The remaining issue concerns the fees related to the parental rights appeal and petition for certiorari. This appeal originated when plaintiffs filed a motion for injunctive relief to compel compliance with the District Court's orders regarding court access. Glover v. Johnson, 850 F.Supp. 592 (E.D.Mich.1994). Plaintiffs were prompted by defendants' notice of decision to reduce funding for Prison Legal Services (PLS), the agency which provides legal assistance to female inmates, and to wholly eliminate PLS' provision of legal assistance on parental rights matters. The District Court interpreted its earlier orders on court access as having ordered the indefinite continuation of defendants' contract with PLS, which since 1978 had required PLS to provide assistance in the area of parental rights, and held defendants in contempt of those earlier orders. Id. at 594. The District Court also concluded that the elimination of legal assistance in the area of parental rights would violate plaintiffs' newly-enunciated constitutional right to legal assistance in parental rights matters. Id. at 595-601. 66 The district court proceedings were broader than those on appeal. What is relevant for our purposes here is not what happened below, but instead the issues litigated on appeal. Appeal no. 96-1617 was limited to whether defendants were required by court order or by the Constitution to provide plaintiff inmates with legal assistance in parental rights matters. Plaintiffs lost on both issues. Glover IV, supra, 75 F.3d 264. 67 In reversing, we first held that the court had abused its discretion in holding defendants in contempt because we found no order requiring the funding of legal assistance in any particular area of law. In the absence of a violated order, the contempt finding could not be sustained. Id. at 267. Next, we held that defendants are not constitutionally required to provide plaintiffs legal assistance in parental rights matters. Id. at 269. The Supreme Court denied plaintiffs' petition for certiorari. --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 67, 136 L.Ed.2d 28 (1996). 68 In awarding fees for appellate work on this matter, the District Court acknowledged this Court's conclusion that defendants had provided legal services for parental rights matters without the support of a direct order but nevertheless concluded that the work done by plaintiff contesting the termination of services was a post-judgment monitoring activity and is therefore compensable. We disagree with this conclusion. Given the lack of any remedial order, plaintiffs' counsel's efforts might best be characterized as a failed offensive attempt to expand the remedy. In such circumstances courts are less inclined to award fees. See, e.g., Ustrak v. Fairman, 851 F.2d 983, 990 (7th Cir.1988). Plaintiffs' attorneys' efforts do not qualify as post-judgment compliance monitoring and plaintiffs cannot rely upon their status as prevailing parties in the underlying litigation. We therefore reverse this portion of the challenged awards given plaintiffs' lack of success in appeal no. 96-1617 and in the petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court.
69 Defendants' challenges to the award of fees for work on the Compliance Committee appeals and on the termination appeal are rejected because the work is compensable compliance monitoring and because plaintiffs prevailed. Defendants' challenge to the award of fees for the unsuccessful work on the parental rights appeal and petition for certiorari is sustained because this claim went beyond the underlying litigation and plaintiffs did not prevail.