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

Heading: Specific Components of Award

Text: Partial Success 60 The district court's opinion is ambiguous with respect to the role plaintiffs' degree of success played in the ultimate attorney fee award. At one point, the district court notes plaintiffs achieved only partial success because they failed to show a violation of their rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and recovered only nominal damages. Appellants' Br., Ex. A. at 3. Yet later, the court describes plaintiffs' success as great. Id. at 4. In reducing plaintiffs' attorney's requested hours, the court then states its reductions reflect time not reasonably necessary and thus ... not reasonably expended on [the] litigation. Id. at 6. 61 If, as the majority interprets the preceding statements, the district court decreased plaintiffs' reimbursable hours based on their failure to prevail on the Free Exercise claim and recover more than nominal damages, the court abused its discretion. This case was not about money. Plaintiffs had one primary goal in bringing suit: forcing the City of Edmond to remove the Latin cross from its official seal. Plaintiffs were fully successful in that endeavor. The fact that plaintiffs achieved this result pursuant to their Establishment Clause claim rather than their alternative Free Exercise claim is irrelevant for fee purposes. A fee award should not be reduced simply because the plaintiff failed to prevail on every contention raised in the lawsuit. Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 435, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983). 62 If, on the other hand, the district court reduced plaintiffs' attorney fees solely as a result of their excessive request, there was no abuse of discretion. This ambiguity highlights why it is so essential that district courts articulate specific reasons for fee awards to give us an adequate basis for review. See Ramos v. Lamm, 713 F.2d 546, 552 (10th Cir.1983). On remand, the district court should make clear the specific reasons for its reductions in plaintiffs' attorney fee application. Simplicity of case 63 In articulating its rationale for rejecting the attorney fee award here, the majority focuses primarily on its disagreement with the district court's characterization of this case as a fairly simple, straightforward lawsuit. Although the constitutional issues raised in this action may rest outside the expertise of many practitioners, it is not clear error to classify the case as fairly simple. 64 The discovery disputes the majority considers pivotal to the difficulty of the case involve three motions by defendants: a motion to compel one piece of correspondence, a motion to strike experts based on plaintiffs' failure to adhere to the court's scheduling order, and a motion in limine to exclude all testimony relating to settlement and compromise negotiations. These pleadings represented standard pretrial maneuvering. Indeed, the fact that the parties filed only three non-dispositive pretrial motions is, if anything, evidence of the simplicity of the case. Further, the litigants' decision to depose every named party in preparation for the two-day trial hardly suggests the lawsuit was atypical or particularly complex. 65 The majority also attaches considerable significance to the reams of legal analysis generated in the case. Some perspective, however, is necessary. First, it appears defendants filed a motion to dismiss all individual capacity claims based on qualified immunity (which was granted) and each side filed a single summary judgment motion on the merits. 5 Plaintiffs' motion contained only fifteen pages of argument. Second, although two special interest groups-the Christian Legal Society of Oklahoma and Citizens for Keeping the Cross-opted to file amicus briefs, their presence does not speak to the difficulty of the case; it indicates only that they sought to influence the court's opinion. Third, the difficult ancillary issues the majority identifies either were not raised by the litigants (e.g., Article III standing for Establishment Clause claims), had no merit (e.g., plaintiffs' objections to defendants' qualified immunity defenses), or played, at best, a de minimis role in the case (e.g., attorney-client privilege). 6 66 Finally, the fact that thoughtful jurists strongly disagreed over the proper outcome of the litigation does not, ipso facto, mean the case was complex. The district court observed the case was virtually a single-issue one, as to whether the average observer, when viewing the seal in question, would perceive it as conveying or attempting to convey primarily a message of endorsing Christianity, or that Christianity is favored or preferred. Appellants' Br., Ex. A at 5 n. 2. This observation is not clearly erroneous. Just as reasonable minds may differ on the outcome of a horse race, so too may appellate courts diverge on their beliefs as to the message conveyed by a religious symbol. Chief Justice Rehnquist's dissent from the Supreme Court's denial of defendants' certiorari petition reflected his desire to create national uniformity on this issue. See City of Edmond v. Robinson, 517 U.S. 1201, 116 S.Ct. 1702, 134 L.Ed.2d 801 (1996). His dissent is not a testament to the complexity of the case. 7 67 Even assuming, arguendo, this case was complex, the district court did not err in classifying plaintiffs' fee application as unreasonable. Defendants liken plaintiffs' litigation strategy to using an atom bomb to kill a fly. Appellees' Br. at 9. I agree. Plaintiffs' attorney appears to have exercised no billing judgment in his fee application. See Ramos, 713 F.2d at 553 (court must distinguish raw time from billable time because it does not follow that the amount of time actually expended is the amount of time reasonably expended). Moreover, the pleadings included in the record on appeal are replete with prolix and repetitious arguments as well as innumerable extraneous materials. In the attorney fee context, there is a fundamental difference between advocacy and overkill. Plaintiffs clearly crossed that line. 68 Comparison of billings and defendants' failure to challenge portions of plaintiffs' fee application 69 The majority criticizes the district court for failing to take into account the billings of defendants' attorneys in calculating plaintiffs' fee award. We have held that [i]n determining what is a reasonable time in which to perform a given task or to prosecute the litigation as a whole, the court should consider that what is reasonable in a particular case can depend upon factors such as ... the responses necessitated by the maneuvering of the other side. Ramos, 713 F.2d at 554. The majority acknowledges the hours expended by defense counsel is not ... an immutable yardstick of reasonableness and may be disregarded or discounted as a comparative factor if found to be unreasonable. Majority Op. at 1284-85. In the next sentence, however, the majority implies the tooth-and-nail litigating approach [defendants] used in this case necessitates a comparison to defendants' attorneys' work. (Id.). 70 The majority has substituted its own discretion for that of the district court. The district court specifically remarked in its attorney fee order that Defendants' reliance on the historical significance of the cross and other features of the seal in defense of Plaintiffs' Establishment Clause claim did complicate and protract the litigation. Appellants' Br., Ex. A at 5. There is nothing in the record to suggest the district court neglected to compensate plaintiffs' attorney for time spent opposing such matters. But the mere fact that one party's attorney bills for an unreasonable number of hours does not a fortiori mean his adversary's attorney can expect to be reimbursed for doing the same. As we recently pointed out in Case v. Unified Sch. Dist. No. 233, 157 F.3d 1243, 1998 WL 714055, at  6 (10th Cir. Oct.13, 1998), [t]o hold otherwise would allow two law firms which, although adversaries in the proceeding, were in agreement in their use of unreasonable billing practices, to force the district court to award compensation it found unreasonable. 71 Handcuffing a court from reducing a fee award below a level to which the non-prevailing party has specifically raised objections invites the same type of collusion and excesses. As long as the district court provides an adequate explanation for its calculations, see Mares, 801 F.2d at 1202-03 (describing level of detail required), a comparison between the court's award and the non-prevailing party's billings is irrelevant.