Opinion ID: 3011095
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Retroactivity Questions

Text: The PLRA's attorney's fee limitation provisions are found at 42 U.S.C. S 1997e(d), which provides in relevant part: (d) Attorney's Fees (1) In any action brought by a prisoner who is confined to any jail, prison, or other correctional facility, in which attorney's fees are authorized under [42 U.S.C. S 1988], such fees shall not be awarded, except to the extent that-- (A) the fee was directly and reasonably incurred in proving an actual violation of the plaintiff 's rights protected by a statute pursuant to which a fee may be awarded under [42 U.S.C. S 1988]; and (B)(i) the amount of the fee is proportionately related to the court ordered relief for the violation; or (ii) the fee was directly and reasonably incurred in enforcing the relief ordered for the violation. (2) Whenever a monetary judgment is awarded in an action described in paragraph (1), a portion of the judgment (not to exceed 25 percent) shall be applied to satisfy the amount of attorney's fees awarded against the defendant. If the award of attorney's fees is not greater than 150 percent of the judgment, the excess shall be paid by the defendant. (3) No award of attorney's fees in an action described in paragraph (1) shall be based on an hourly rate greater than 150 percent of the hourly rate established under section 3006A of Title 18[, the Criminal Justice Act,] for payment of court-appointed counsel . . . . These PLRA attorney's fee limitation provisions raise three retroactivity questions here. With respect to consideration of compensation based on the time a plaintiff 's attorney has expended on the case, the PLRA limits attorney's fees to an hourly rate not greater than 150% of the hourly rate for court-appointed counsel established under the Criminal Justice Act in the applicable district. In this case, the hourly rates allowed on the basis of 150% of the Criminal Justice Act rates were 6 $97.50 for court time and $67.50 for time out of court. As we have indicated, however, the court applied the limitations only to services after the effective date of the PLRA, and the defendants do not contend that the limitations should have been applied to earlier services. Collins contends, however, that the hourly rate provisions should not be applied at all in this action as hefiled it before the enactment of the PLRA. Another limitation is predicated on the amount of the recovery and provides that the fees awarded cannot exceed 150% of the judgment. In this case, as the judgment was for $20,000, the district court capped the fee at $30,000. In this regard, we point out that the defendants do not contend that the fees awarded Collins' attorneys for prePLRA services should count against the $30,000 cap and thus the district court applied the cap only against the fees for post-PLRA services. Inasmuch as the fees for post-PLRA services calculated on the basis of the hourly rate limitation was $30,025.30, the capping provision reduced the attorney's fees by the nominal amount of $25.30 to $30,000. Collins nevertheless contends that the cap should not be applied in this case in any degree as hefiled it before the enactment of the PLRA. The third provision is a fee limitation only in the sense that it places responsibility for the fees on the plaintiff by requiring that a portion of the judgment (not to exceed 25%) be applied to satisfy the award of attorney's fees. Here the district court allotted 2.5% of the responsibility for the fee to Collins.5 Collins contends that no portion of his judgment should have been applied to the attorney's fees. Congress did not clearly define the temporal reach of any of the three limitation provisions so we must consider _________________________________________________________________ 5. Conceivably, depending upon the amount of the judgment and of the attorney's fees awarded, the plaintiff could be responsible for all of the fees. We point out that there might be some difficult questions raised in a case in which a prisoner obtains extensive and important equitable relief and a modest award of damages. Perhaps in such a case an attorney's fee would not be limited by the cap in 42 U.S.C. S 1997(e)(d)(2). We, however, leave that question to another day as Collins recovered only monetary damages. 7 whether as applied here they have a retroactive effect. See Landgraf v. USI Film Prods., 511 U.S. 244, 280, 114 S.Ct. 1483, 1505 (1994). The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Inmates of D.C. Jail v. Jackson, 158 F.3d 1357 (D.C. Cir. 1998), recently addressed this issue in part. The court concluded that it would join the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Williams v. Brimeyer, 122 F.3d 1093, 1094 (8th Cir. 1997), in holding that retroactivity concerns are not implicated when the statute is applied to work performed after April 26, 1996, the date of passage of the PLRA. Inmates of D.C. Jail, 158 F.3d at 1360. The court went on to explain: When it is applied to work performed after the effective date of the Act, the PLRA raises none of the retroactivity concerns that require the analysis used by the district court because the statute creates present and future effects on present and future conduct, and has no effect on past conduct. Compare [Jensen v. Clarke, 94 F.3d 1191, 1203 (8th Cir. 1996)] (holding that the PLRA did not apply to pre-Act work) with Williams, 122 F.3d at 1094 (holding that as applied to work performed after the passage of the Act, there is no retroactivity). The fees at issue were earned after the PLRA passed. The PLRA does not in this case upset vested interests because no right to a fee existed until the work was done. Because we find no retroactive effect, we need not consider the Supreme Court's extensive analysis of when to permit retroactive application. See Landgraf, 511 U.S. 244; [Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U.S. 320, 117 S.Ct. 2059 (1997)]. As the Supreme Court stated in Landgraf, normally a court is to apply the law in effect at the time it renders its decision. 511 U.S. at 264 (quoting Bradley v. School Bd. of Richmond, 416 U.S. 696, 711, 94 S.Ct. 2006, 40 L.Ed.2d 476 (1974)). In Landgraf, the Supreme Court noted that it has adopted a functional definition of retroactivity. See id. at 268-69 & n.23. In Miller v. Florida, it stated that [a] law is retrospective if it changes the legal consequences of acts completed before its effective date. 482 U.S. 423, 430, 107 S.Ct. 2446, 96 L.Ed.2d 351 (1987) . . . . 8 To determine if a statute has retroactive effect, the court must decide whether it would impair rights a party possessed when he acted, increase a party's liability for past conduct, or impose new duties with respect to transactions already completed. Landgraf, 511 U.S. at 280, 114 S.Ct. 1483. In determining whether the statute has retroactive effect, the court should consider fair notice, reasonable reliance, and settled expectations. Id. at 270, 114 S.Ct. 1483. In this case, the work at issue was not done until after the passage of the Act. The attorneys did not possess a right to payment until they performed the work for which the fees were awarded, and thus had no settled expectations. Simply put, as applied in this case, the PLRA does not impair rights or upset expectations that did not exist prior to its passage, and could not exist after its passage. Because we hold only that the fee limitations apply to work performed after the passage of the Act, there is no need to continue the retroactivity analysis. Inmates of D.C. Jail, 158 F.3d at 1360-61 (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, the court in Inmates of D.C. Jail held that applying the fee-capping provisions of [42 U.S.C. S 1997e(d) ] to work performed after April 26, 1996, does not implicate retroactivity concerns. Id. at 1361. We agree with the foregoing analysis, and thus we follow it.6 While Inmates of D.C. Jail was not concerned with the limitation provision based on the size of the judgment, that provision raises no additional retroactivity problems here as the district court awarded Collins fees for pre-PLRA services on an hourly basis without regard for any of the PLRA's limitations. Thus, we hold that the attorney's fees limitation provisions of the PLRA predicated on hourly rates and the _________________________________________________________________ 6. We are aware of but do not follow Hadix v. Johnson, 143 F.3d 246 (6th Cir.), cert. granted, 119 S.Ct. 508 (1998), which reached a contrary result. We have no reason to express an opinion on whether the PLRA limitations could be applied to cap fees for services performed before its effective date as the defendants do not contend that it should be so applied. 9 amount of the judgment simply do not have retroactive effect, at least when, as here, a court applies them solely to limit fees awarded for services performed after the effective date of the Act based on a judgment entered after that date. See also Madrid v. Gomez, 150 F.3d 1030, 1039 (9th Cir. 1998).7 We, however, face a question not involved in Inmates of D.C. Jail, namely whether the PLRA provision that requires application of a portion of the judgment to payment of attorney's fees has a retroactive effect. See Mathews v. Kidder, Peabody & Co., 161 F.3d 156, 159-60 (3d Cir. 1998), cert. denied, 1999 WL 86955 (Apr. 19, 1999) (No. 981319). The Supreme Court in Landgraf indicated that to determine whether a statute has retroactive effect a court must decide, inter alia, whether it would impair rights a party possessed when he acted. Landgraf, 511 U.S. at 280, 114 S.Ct. at 1505. Here the application of a portion of the judgment to the attorney's fees does have a retroactive effect because under 42 U.S.C. S 1988 when Collins brought this action he could have anticipated applying to the court for an award of all of his reasonable attorney's fees. While undoubtedly even before the enactment of the PLRA various factors might have limited the amount of the award, see Washington v. Philadelphia County Ct. of Common Pleas, 89 F.3d 1031 (3d Cir. 1996), when Collins brought this action and then applied for the appointment of counsel prior to the PLRA's enactment, he had no reason to believe that the court would order that a portion of his judgment, if he obtained one, would be used to satisfy the attorney's fees that the court awarded. Moreover, the various factors that could have led a court before enactment of the PLRA to reduce a _________________________________________________________________ 7. Our result is not inconsistent with our opinion in Gibbs v. Ryan, 160 F.3d 160 (3d Cir. 1998), in which we held that the three strikes provision of the PLRA, 28 U.S.C. S 1915(g), did not permit the district court to revoke an order granting in forma pauperis status entered prior to the effective date of the PLRA. In Gibbs we pointed out that the three strikes provision limited a prisoner's right to bring a civil action or appeal a judgment. 160 F.3d at 162. Obviously, in Gibbs the prisoner already had brought his action before the enactment of the PLRA. In this case the fees were awarded after the enactment of the PLRA. 10 fee application continue to be applicable after its enactment. Thus, we see no escape from the conclusion that the PLRA has a retroactive effect in this case to the extent that it requires that a portion of a judgment be applied to pay attorney's fees. The PLRA does not indicate whether 42 U.S.C. S 1997e(d) should be applied retroactively, and we find no clear congressional intent from any other source to apply the statute retroactively. In these circumstances, we will apply the judicial default rule recognized in Landgraf that when Congress does not state its intent with respect to retroactivity a statute with a retroactive effect will be applied prospectively. See Landgraf, 511 U.S. at 280, S.Ct. at 1505; see also Lindh v. Murphy, 117 S.Ct. 2059, 2062 (1997); Mathews, 161 F.3d at 159-60. Consequently, we will modify the order of February 17, 1998, to the extent that it applied a portion of the judgment to satisfy attorney's fees by eliminating that provision.