Opinion ID: 157110
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Comparison with opponent's attorney hours.

Text: 34 The district court was similarly unpersuaded by the plaintiffs' attempt to justify their hours expended by comparing that figure to the number of hours expended by the defendants' lawyers. The court stated that if the defendants actually had expended anywhere near the number of hours of attorney time as suggested by the plaintiffs, 8 then the amount of the defendants' hours was simply more unreasonable and it could not be used to transmute the amount of time spent by Plaintiffs' counsel into something reasonable. 35 The Tenth Circuit has long accepted the proposition that one of the factors useful in evaluating the reasonableness of the number of attorney hours in a fee request is the responses necessitated by the maneuvering of the other side. Ramos, 713 F.2d at 554. The Supreme Court has also recognized that part of an attorney's calculus of the amount of time reasonably necessary for a case is the vigor which the opponents bring to the dispute. See City of Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561, 580 n. 11, 106 S.Ct. 2686, 91 L.Ed.2d 466 (1986) (plurality opinion) ( 'The government cannot litigate tenaciously and then be heard to complain about the time necessarily spent by the plaintiff in response.' ) (quoting Copeland v. Marshall, 641 F.2d 880, 904 (D.C.Cir.1980)); see also 2 Mary Francis Derfner & Arthur D. Wolf, Court Awarded Attorney Fees, p 16.02[b] (1997) (discussing cases that have held the vehemence or tenacity of the opposition will justify an increase in the amount of time an attorney must necessarily--and therefore reasonably--spend in countering the opposition and winning the suit). 36 The evidence of the hours expended by defense counsel is not, of course, an immutable yardstick of reasonableness, and it may be disregarded or discounted as a comparative factor if found to be unreasonable in its own right. However, here the effort expended by the defendants suggests at least that they viewed the case as sufficiently complex and serious to warrant the expenditure of large amounts of attorney time, and it highlights the tooth-and-nail litigating approach the city used in this case. In light of this tenacious effort by the city and its lawyers, the amount of attorney time expended by the plaintiffs begins to look more reasonable, not less. 37