Opinion ID: 4020402
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Legal Research

Text: Next, Defendants argue that counsel billed unreasonable and duplicative research hours. In total, the NEOCH/SEIU Local 1 legal teams billed roughly 750 hours on research activities. This included: fifteen NEOCH attorneys who billed their own research; eight SEIU Local 1 attorneys who billed their own research; Altshuler Berzon Attorney Diana Reddy’s 20+ hours researching “expansion of consent decree”; Reddy’s 30+ hours researching civil contempt; and law clerk research on numerous subjects by the Altshuler Berzon firm (9.8 hours researching constitutional issues, 8 hours researching unlitigated HAVA claims, 9.4 hours researching “1983 injunction,” 7.8 hours researching “deliberate indifference,” and 11.8 hours for an evidentiary standards memo). The district court disagreed, citing not only Plaintiffs’ detailed billing records and Defendants’ conclusory allegations that the award was excessive, but also that Defendants had mounted a vigorous opposition to the Decree and were therefore in no position to complain. Sept. 29, 2014 Op., at 9. Further, the court expressly stated that the 2013 extension required Plaintiffs to engage in “significant substantive legal research, analysis, and strategy”; that the 2012 work involved “multiple avenues of defense in order to protect the Decree”; and that the Nos. 14-4083/ 4084/ Northeast Ohio Coalition, et al. v. Husted, et al. Page 25 4132/ 4133/ 15-3295/ 3296/ 3380/ 3381 preliminary and permanent injunction motions required Plaintiffs “to attack novel and complex issues of constitutional law.” Id. at 8. Defendants retort that generic allusions to “complexity” and “novel and complex issues of constitutional law” should not provide a free pass for scrutiny of the hours here. But the district court specifically held that this case involved “significant novel and complex constitutional and procedural issues, including the All Writs Act, the Anti-Injunction Act, the applicability of Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b), and the constitutionality of state laws and practices under the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses.” Id. at 29. We do not read the district court’s “concise but clear explanation” in a vacuum, but against the backdrop of the comprehensive written opinions of the district court and this court, which fully establish the complexity of the numerous federal and procedural issues presented in these cases. Again, other than complaining about the numbers, Defendants offer no explanation why the hours are excessive. Such conclusory allegations do not provide us with any basis to discredit the district court’s factual findings.