Opinion ID: 157110
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Partial success.

Text: 26 Although the district court noted that the plaintiffs had prevailed in their principal goal of removing the Latin cross from the city's official seal, the court nevertheless found that the plaintiffs had achieved only partial success. The court appears to have concluded that it should exclude all of the plaintiffs' attorney hours associated with three unsuccessful claims: the Free Exercise Clause claim, the claim for individual-capacity liability against the city officials, and the claim for actual damages beyond merely nominal damages. This conclusion, however, is legally indefensible in light of the fact that all of the unsuccessful claims were intertwined with the successful claims through a common core of facts or related legal theories. 27 There is no doubt that a district court may reduce a lodestar calculation on the grounds that a prevailing party has achieved only partial success. See Hensley, 461 U.S. at 436-37, 103 S.Ct. 1933; Jane L., 61 F.3d at 1510. However, as the Court noted in Hensley, many civil rights suits involve multiple claims based on a common core of facts or ... related legal theories. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 435, 103 S.Ct. 1933. In such cases, it is inappropriate for a district court to evaluate the individual claims as though they were discrete and severable. Litigants should be given the breathing room to raise alternative legal grounds without fear that merely raising an alternative theory will threaten the attorney's subsequent compensation. Instead, a court should focus on the significance of the overall relief that the prevailing party has won: The result is what matters. Id. 28 We have applied the teaching of Hensley to reverse a district court's reduction of attorney's fees for a plaintiff who prevailed on a part of her Equal Pay Act claim but failed on her Title VII claims--the facts supporting the plaintiff's unsuccessful claims were part of one bundle of proof with the successful one, and thus the plaintiff's attorney was entitled to be fully compensated. See Tidwell v. Fort Howard Corp., 989 F.2d 406, 412-13 (10th Cir.1993). Similarly, in another case we found that various legal theories offered by plaintiffs in a challenge against a Utah waiting period for abortions were all interrelated, and as a result, success on the basis of one theory would require attorney compensation for all the related theories. See Jane L., 61 F.3d at 1512. Finally, in one of our most recent attorney's fees cases, we rejected a Title VII defendant's appeal calling for a reduction in a fee award granted to the plaintiff because we found that the plaintiff's unsuccessful state-law contract and emotional distress claims were all intimately related to her successful Title VII hostile work environment claim. See Smith v. Norwest Fin. Acceptance, Inc., 129 F.3d 1408, 1418-19 (10th Cir.1997). 29 These cases demonstrate that when a plaintiff achieves the principal goal of her lawsuit, lack of success on some of her interrelated claims may not be used as a basis for reducing the plaintiff's fee award. When a plaintiff achieves most or all of what she aimed for in a civil rights lawsuit, her lawyer should receive a fully compensatory fee. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 435, 103 S.Ct. 1933. As the Court said in Hensley, the most critical factor is the degree of success obtained. Id. at 436, 103 S.Ct. 1933. 30 In the instant case, it was clear from the very start of litigation that the plaintiffs' principal goal was the removal of the religious emblem from the city's seal. The plaintiffs suggested as much in their complaint when their only request for money damages sought an amount of not less than $25.00 ... for nominal actual damages. Although it is not entirely clear whether this demand should be read as requesting actual damages or nominal damages or both, it is clear that monetary relief was not a principal aim of the suit. As a result, when the plaintiffs won a permanent injunction requiring the removal of the Latin cross from Edmond's official seal, as well as nominal damages of $1 against each defendant, they won virtually everything that they sought. 31 Furthermore, those claims that were unsuccessful for the plaintiffs were all related because they involved a common core of facts as well as closely linked legal theories. All of the claims in this case arose out of the single fact of the city's use of a religious emblem in its official seal, and both the state-constitutional claims and the First Amendment claims tracked the same body of law. 32 There is no doubt that, as the Court said in Hensley, a fee request may be reduced when some of a plaintiff's interrelated claims are unsuccessful. See Hensley, 461 U.S. at 436-37, 103 S.Ct. 1933. But, Hensley made it abundantly clear that failure on some interrelated claims is not nearly as important a factor as the overall relief obtained by the plaintiff. See id. at 435, 103 S.Ct. 1933. As we said in Jane L., when a plaintiff relies on interrelated claims in support of a single outcome, failure on some of those claims does not preclude a full recovery when the plaintiff achieves the outcome that she sought. See Jane L., 61 F.3d at 1512. Hensley establishes that what matters is the result, and in the instant case, the result for the plaintiffs was complete vindication. In this context, it was legally incorrect for the district court to reduce the plaintiffs' fee request on the basis of the plaintiffs' only partial success for their interrelated claims. 33