Opinion ID: 729739
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Time spent

Text: 33 The Dissent questions plaintiffs' litigation strategy; whether, for example, it was appropriate for counsel to engage in certain discovery 10 and to spend as much time as they did preparing the summary judgment motion. But the Dissent fails to mention that the reasonableness of the number of hours was irrelevant to the district court upon remand and irrelevant to us on appeal because defendants do not challenge the number of hours for which plaintiffs request fees 11 and we do not generally consider arguments not raised by the parties. See Blackburn v. Goettel-Blanton, 898 F.2d 95, 97 n. 6 (9th Cir. 1990). 34 Furthermore, although it may be easy, in hindsight, to tout this as an easy case, 12 plaintiffs cannot be faulted for their thoroughness under the circumstances. 13 Although one could argue that plaintiffs need only have pled the legal theory that actually carried the day rather than the six additional theories pled, one must remember the status of Roe was extremely tenuous after Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 492 U.S. 490, 106 L. Ed. 2d 410, 109 S. Ct. 3040 (1989), which was decided less than a year before this lawsuit was brought. 14 35 The Dissent questions the relevance of many of the affidavits submitted to support plaintiffs' claims. In fact, many of the criticized affidavits are directly relevant. For example, the affidavits regarding the effect of the statute on doctors and nurses were directly relevant to plaintiffs' claim that the statute is void for vagueness and violates the right to free speech. The affidavits regarding the subjugation of women on Guam and the medical benefits of abortion are relevant to plaintiffs' claim that the law violated the equal protection clause and the thirteenth amendment right to be free from slavery by robbing women of their bodily integrity and dignity and risking their lives and health. 36 Moreover, although it makes a much better study in contrasts to compare plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment with the eight paragraph opinion of the Guam Attorney General, the relevant comparison for purposes of determining whether plaintiffs' counsel spent inordinate amounts of time preparing their motion for summary judgment is between the motion and defendants' response in opposition. If plaintiffs' motion and accompanying declarations were as irrelevant and needlessly verbose as the Dissent contends, defendants did not deem it appropriate to bring it to the attention of the district court. Rather, they saw fit to file a 65 page response supported by 108 pages of declarations and other attachments touching on topics similar to those addressed by plaintiffs. For example, several of the declarations defendants submitted are personal testimonials of women who have undergone abortions and who describe the physical, psychological and emotional pain they experienced from their abortions. Other declarations touch on such topics as the concept that life begins at conception, 15 the developmental stages of embryos and fetuses, 16 words in the Chamorro language that refer to pregnancy and the birthing process, 17 and the various methods of performing abortions. 18 Defendants also include a newspaper article regarding physicians who do and do not perform abortions and the reasons why. 19 Even if the reasonableness of the number of hours for which fees were awarded was at issue, we could not say, on this record, that the district court abused its discretion in awarding fees for the hours it did.