Opinion ID: 3052565
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Plaintiff was a prevailing party.

Text: As a threshold matter, Defendants argue that we should affirm the denial of fees because Plaintiff was not a “prevailing party” under the ADA. We disagree. 10426 JANKEY v. POOP DECK [1] In a case pursued under the ADA, a court, “in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party . . . a reasonable attorney’s fee.” 42 U.S.C. § 12205. “[F]or a litigant to be a ‘prevailing party’ for the purpose of awarding attorneys’ fees, he must meet two criteria: he must achieve a material alteration of the legal relationship of the parties, and that alteration must be judicially sanctioned.” P.N. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 474 F.3d 1165, 1172 (9th Cir. 2007) (internal quotation marks omitted). In other words, the alteration must have a “judicial imprimatur.” Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home, Inc. v. W. Va. Dep’t of Health & Human Res., 532 U.S. 598, 605 (2001). [2] Here, the district court dismissed Plaintiff’s case pursuant to a settlement agreement between the parties under which the court retained jurisdiction to enforce the settlement. Defendants argue that those actions by the district court do not constitute a sufficient judicial imprimatur. That argument is foreclosed by Skaff v. Meridien North America Beverly Hills, LLC, 506 F.3d 832 (9th Cir. 2007) (per curiam). There, we held that a “settlement agreement and the district court’s order dismissing the case[, which] provided that the district court would retain jurisdiction to enforce the agreement,” satisfied the requirements of Buckhannon to render the plaintiff a prevailing party under the ADA. Id. at 844 & n.12. The settlement agreement in this case both authorized judicial enforcement of its terms and expressly referred resolution of the issue of attorney fees to the district court. Alternatively, Defendants argue that the settlement agreement did not meaningfully alter the legal relationship between the parties because, by the time the parties signed the settlement agreement, the only modifications that Defendants had not completed were construction of the accessible restroom in the Mermaid Restaurant and signage about that restroom in the Poop Deck. Defendants reason that Defendant Thelen already was bound to construct the restroom by a settlement agreement in Plaintiff’s action against the Mermaid Restaurant and, therefore, that the settlement agreement in this case JANKEY v. POOP DECK 10427 obligated Defendants to do nothing that they had not previously completed or were obligated to complete. [3] Defendants are mistaken. A settlement agreement meaningfully alters the legal relationship between parties if it allows one party to require the other party “to do something it otherwise would not be required to do.” Fischer v. SJB-P.D. Inc., 214 F.3d 1115, 1118 (9th Cir. 2000). Defendants’ argument, on its face, acknowledges that the Mermaid settlement agreement did not bind Defendants Poop Deck and The Poop Deck Inc. to construct an accessible restroom. Plaintiff had the authority to require them to do so—and to do so by June 30, 2006—under, and only because of, the settlement agreement at issue here. In addition, the instant settlement agreement, and only that agreement, bound Defendants to install the appropriate signage in the Poop Deck informing patrons about the accessible restroom located in the Mermaid Restaurant and to inform Frankovich when all of the agreed modifications were completed. Thus, Plaintiff was the prevailing party on his ADA claim. B. The district court erred in denying Plaintiff attorney fees. [4] “The Supreme Court has explained that[,] in civil rights cases, the district court’s discretion is limited.” Fischer, 214 F.3d at 1119 n.2. A prevailing plaintiff under the ADA “ ‘should ordinarily recover an attorney’s fee unless special circumstances would render such an award unjust.’ ” Barrios v. Cal. Interscholastic Fed’n, 277 F.3d 1128, 1134 (9th Cir. 2002) (quoting Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 429 (1983)). “Congress passed the ADA in 1990 to provide clear, strong, consistent, enforceable standards addressing discrimination against individuals with disabilities.” Molski v. M.J. Cable, Inc., 481 F.3d 724, 730 (9th Cir. 2007) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). And Congress enacted the fee-shifting provisions of civil rights statutes “to ensure effec10428 JANKEY v. POOP DECK tive access to the judicial process for persons with civil rights grievances.” Hensley, 461 U.S. at 429 (internal quotation marks omitted). “If successful plaintiffs were routinely forced to bear their own attorneys’ fees, few aggrieved parties would be in a position to advance the public interest by invoking the injunctive powers of the federal courts.” Newman v. Piggie Park Enters., Inc., 390 U.S. 400, 402 (1968) (per curiam). Consequently, recovery is “the rule rather than the exception.” Herrington v. County of Sonoma, 883 F.2d 739, 743 (9th Cir. 1989) (order) (internal quotation marks omitted). The district court applied the correct legal standard to Plaintiff’s request for attorney fees under the ADA, asking whether an award of fees to Plaintiff would be unjust. However, Plaintiff argues that the district court erred by considering the lack of prelitigation notice in making that decision. In Skaff, 506 F.3d at 844, we reviewed a district court’s denial of an award of attorney fees where the court “did not explicitly indicate the significance of the fact that [the plaintiff] did not give pre-suit notice . . . [but] apparently viewed pre-suit notice as a prerequisite to recovering attorneys’ fees under the ADA.” (Emphasis added.) We “h[e]ld that the ADA contains no such notice requirement, and . . . decline[d] to imply one.” Id. We reasoned: The text of the ADA contains no pre-suit notice requirement. If Congress believes it is preferable as a matter of policy to require plaintiffs to give notice to defendants before filing an ADA suit, it is free to amend the Act. . . . Unless and until Congress sees fit to engraft a notice requirement onto the ADA, we apply the ADA as written without a pre-filing notice requirement. Id. at 844-45. We vacated the district court’s order denying an award of attorney fees and remanded for “the district court [to] consider the merits of [the plaintiff]’s motion.” Id. at 846. JANKEY v. POOP DECK 10429 [5] Unlike in Skaff, the district court here did not purport to require prelitigation notice. Instead, this case presents a question of law left open by Skaff—whether the ADA allows a district court to consider lack of prelitigation notice as a factor in its special-circumstances analysis in determining whether a request for attorney fees under the ADA would be unjust. [6] Denying attorney fees altogether as “unjust” because of a lack of prelitigation notice would constitute, in essence, a sanction for failing to provide notice. But as we held in Skaff, the ADA does not require prelitigation notice. Litigants and their lawyers should not be penalized for failing to meet a purported technical requirement that does not exist. And failing to provide prelitigation notice cannot, by itself, be considered harrassing or improper because the ADA permits the conduct. Nor does it matter whether the district court considers the lack of notice in conjunction with other adverse considerations. If the other conduct is sufficient to render a fee award unjust, then the lack of prelitigation notice need not be considered; if the other conduct is not sufficient, then the lack of prelitigation notice would be, in the end, what justifies denying fees, in contravention of Skaff. [7] We therefore hold that a district court may not use a lack of prelitigation notice as a factor in determining whether to deny as unjust a request for attorney fees under the ADA. Here, the district court erred when it used Plaintiff’s failure to provide prelitigation notice as a factor to deny him attorney fees as a prevailing plaintiff. [8] The district court also denied fees because it found that Plaintiff unreasonably protracted the litigation, but unreasonably prolonging a legitimate suit is a reason to reduce fees, not to deny them altogether. That successful litigation took longer than necessary does not render “unjust” an award of fees in some amount. See Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434 (“The district court . . . should exclude from th[e] initial fee calculation 10430 JANKEY v. POOP DECK hours that were not reasonably expended.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). In addition, here, the court below stated that the “abusive litigation tactics [of Plaintiff’s counsel] have been well documented.” To the extent that the court was referring to Plaintiff’s lack of prelitigation notice and his protraction of the litigation, we already have explained that neither reason justifies an outright denial of fees. To the extent that the court was referring to Plaintiff’s counsel’s numerous other lawsuits in the Central District of California, those cases are not a part of the record here. [9] Consequently, the district court proffered no legitimate factor that would constitute a special circumstance to render an award of attorney fees unjust. We therefore reverse the district court’s denial of Plaintiff’s request for fees and remand for a calculation of reasonable attorney fees. C. The district court has discretion to reduce Plaintiff’s fee award. On remand, the district court has discretion in determining the amount of [the] fee award. This is appropriate in view of the district court’s superior understanding of the litigation and the desirability of avoiding frequent appellate review of what essentially are factual matters. It remains important, however, for the district court to provide a concise but clear explanation of its reasons for the fee award. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 437. [10] “The most useful starting point for determining the amount of a reasonable fee is the number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate.” Id. at 433. But “[t]he district court . . . should exclude from th[e] initial fee calculation hours that were not reasonJANKEY v. POOP DECK 10431 ably expended.” Id. at 434 (internal quotation marks omitted). In other words, the court should exclude “hours that [we]re excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary.” Id. Consequently, although the district court erred in considering Plaintiff’s protraction of the litigation in deciding whether to deny fees, the court may consider whether Plaintiff protracted the litigation in deciding whether to reduce fees. [11] In addition, we clarify that a district court may, in its protraction analysis, consider whether a plaintiff provided prelitigation notice. Prelitigation notice is not required, and failing to provide notice is not unjust, but district courts have discretion to consider all kinds of non-required conduct in deciding whether litigants have protracted litigation. For example, there is no legal requirement that a lawyer respond to telephone calls, but it would not unduly penalize a lawyer to consider such conduct in finding that the lawyer unreasonably protracted litigation. Similarly, while a district court may not reduce fees on the premise that the suit should not have been filed at all before providing notice, it does have discretion to determine whether failing to provide prelitigation notice resulted in unnecessary fees during the course of the litigation—that is, fees that would have been lower had there been notice before filing. Accord Ass’n of Disabled Ams. v. Neptune Designs, Inc., 469 F.3d 1357, 1360 (11th Cir. 2006)