Opinion ID: 372830
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: the 1978 fee award

Text: 71 Because there has not been an adequate evidentiary hearing relating to the pre-1971 services and expenses, the 1977 award must be remanded for further proceedings, resolution of the question whether the 1966 judgment barred a later award of fees, and a complete recalculation in accordance with this opinion. Among other factors, the district court will be required to consider whether the inflation of the intervening years must be taken into account, or whether the lower rate which prevailed for services at the time they were rendered has been balanced by the long delay which will reduce the purchasing power of the award's dollars in the present marketplace. With regard to the 1978 award, we have a complete record and conclude that the interests of justice will be served, in light of the long delay in this case, by our recalculation of an appropriate award of fees and expenses for that period. See Weisenberger, supra, 593 F.2d at 54. 72 Before entering into a discussion of the amount of the fees to be awarded, and laying aside for the moment challenges which have been made concerning such issues as duplication of services, we first observe that with one possible exception there can be no question concerning the essential nature of the services at issue. The possible exception involves the award of attorney's fees against the City of Memphis for services rendered in an action against the city. As the district judge observed in his opinion, that action was based upon the conduct of the Mayor or a majority of the members of the Council of the City of Memphis or both. District Judge McRae then went on to observe, These matters required the Board (of Education of the Memphis City Schools) And the plaintiffs to seek injunctive relief in this cause against conduct that was designed to interfere with the desegregation plan ordered by this Court in accordance with the direction and rulings of the appellate courts. (Emphasis supplied.) This finding of fact is fully supported by the record and disposes of any suggestion that the services on this account were not essential, and Judge McRae subsequently commented, (T)he attorneys for the plaintiffs did participate. Thus their entitlement to fees on this account is clearly demonstrated. 73 We have already established the fact that the plaintiffs are the prevailing party in this lawsuit; the Memphis schools are desegregated and the defendants did not succeed in their attempt to modify the plan in ways which would benefit white students at the expense of black students. 74 A. Reasonable Hours of Service: The attorneys for the plaintiffs have documented a total of 271.25 hours of service related to the five-day trial held in 1977. The district court disapproved, without specific findings, but apparently on grounds of unnecessary duplication of service, 74 hours. Not only is this cut unsupported in the record, but we conclude that it was clearly excessive given the facts of this case. Rather than attempt to pick out which hours of service were unnecessarily duplicative given the use of three attorneys, we elect to simply use a 5% Reduction factor. There were only three attorneys involved in this aspect of the case, and a perusal of the hours billed demonstrates that there was little overlapping of service. Therefore the 10% Reduction factor which we employed in Weisenberger, supra, 593 F.2d at 54 n.12, and approved in Oliver, 576 F.2d 714, would be excessive in this case. We have already held that it was improper for the district court to reduce compensation because the plaintiffs did not prevail on parts of issues. We can see no reason to further reduce the hours of documented service provided by counsel for the plaintiffs, and defendants suggest none. 75 B. A Reasonable Hourly Rate: The attorneys for the plaintiffs have submitted their normal billing rates in affidavit form. Mr. Lucas normally charges $125 per hour for comparable federal litigation, Mr. Noel charges $60 per hour, and Mr. Fields charges $40 per hour. These differences reflect the differences in experience among the attorneys. 76 The rates attested to were accepted by the district court and are not here challenged by the defendants, with the exception of Mr. Lucas's fee, which was cut to $75 per hour, apparently because it had awarded Mr. Lucas only $60 per hour the year before in connection with the 1977 award. We express no opinion as to the accuracy of the fee per hour awarded in the 1977 award, but do agree that Mr. Lucas's billing rate for federal litigation is high for office services. However, it is reasonable and supported both by the record and our own experience with fees charged by lawyers of his experience and legal stature for trial services. We therefore will calculate Mr. Lucas's fee under a bifurcated scale, using as base figures $125 per hour for trial work and the $75 per hour which the district court found to be reasonable for office services. No challenge is raised to the hourly fee granted by the district court for the services of Mr. Noel and Mr. Fields, except to the extent that the district court failed to adjust their normal hourly rate upward to account for the contingency nature of the fee. 77 The hearings here involved 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. Therefore, there was a real element of contingency as to whether the attorneys would be compensated for their services at all. The contingency element, on the other hand, is somewhat reduced both by the admittedly small but assured financial support received from the Legal Defense Fund and by the fact that the School Board here was seeking to alter a final judgment of the district court which had been arrived at only after many years of bitter litigation. Given that the burden was on the Board, we do not believe that there was a very large chance that the plaintiffs would wholly fail to prevail. An upward adjustment of 10% In the regular billing rates would, we believe, serve the Congressional purpose of awarding sufficient compensation to attract competent counsel. 78 Therefore, Mr. Lucas will be awarded $137.50 per hour for his trial work, and $82.50 per hour for his in-office work. Mr. Noel will be compensated at a rate of $66 per hour for the time he devoted to this cause, and Mr. Fields will receive $44 per hour. The total compensation we award to the attorneys in this case is set out in chart form below: 79 Mr. Lucas: 32 hrs. (trial time) ---------- less 1.6 hrs. (5% duplication reduction) --------------- 30.4 hrs. x 137.50 hrs. (reasonable hourly rate) --------------- $4,180.00 29.5 hrs. (office time) less 1.5 hrs. (5% duplication reduction) --------------- 28 hrs. x 82.50 (reasonable hourly rate) --------------- $2,310.00 Mr. Noel: 81.75 hrs. --------- less 4.09 hrs. (5% duplication reduction) --------------- 77.66 hrs. X 66.00 (reasonable hourly rate) --------------- $5,125.56 Mr. Fields: 128 hrs. ----------- less 6.4 hrs. (5% duplication reduction) --------------- 121.6 hrs. x 44.00 (reasonable hourly rate) --------------- $5,544.00 80 C. Costs and Out-of-Pocket Expenses: In its ruling, the district court awarded the plaintiffs all of their expenses except that it cut the claimed expenses for an expert witness and for preparation of a student locator map by half, finding that these large expenses were incurred without prior approval of the court and were excessive. These items are recoverable, if at all, pursuant to the court's sound discretion under 28 U.S.C. § 1920. We will not disturb the conclusions of the district court on this matter. 81 The district court also reduced by half the duplicating expenses claimed by the plaintiffs' attorneys. These fees are recoverable under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 as a part of attorneys' fees, and are subject to closer review by this court. We believe that the plaintiffs have demonstrated that their duplicating expenses were reasonable in view of the large number of documents involved in this hearing. We are mindful of the frequent admonitions received by counsel in this Circuit, both from this Court and trial judges, to ensure that they are prepared with adequate numbers of copies of all relevant documents for the lawyers and judges involved, so that our time, which is far more valuable than the 10cents a page that it costs to photocopy a document, is not wasted by unnecessary delay. We do not believe that we should second-guess the attorneys' decision that four copies (for their own use, the use of witnesses and for the court) was necessary in order to efficiently and competently try this case. The district judge allowed a total of $5,200.16 in costs and out-of-pocket expenses. We add $244.30 in additional reasonable copying expenses, for a total of $5,444.46.