Opinion ID: 393164
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Impact of Copeland v. Marshall: Of Apples and Oranges

Text: 23 In Copeland, we held that attorney's fee awards in Title VII litigation were to be computed on the basis of the market value of the services rendered the client. 62 While the awardees there were attorneys associated with a private for-profit law firm, we made clear that our holding applied equally to lawyers employed in public interest law offices. 63 This, the union argues, is at war with our conclusion today. 24 The answer, once again, is that the instant case is simply not Copeland reincarnated. The distinguishing wrinkle here is that above-cost fees are requested by a lay organization, a circumstance interposing grave ethical difficulties not arising in Copeland, where market-value fees were sought for the attorneys themselves. There thus was no occasion in Copeland for operation of the well-entrenched ethical principles blocking the union's way in the case at bar. 64 With no overriding facet of law or policy evident, we think our decision should indulge these principles their accustomed sway. 25 We do not imply, of course, that Congress could not assign the considerations at stake values different from those ascribed by the legal profession. It suffices merely to observe that for cases like the one before us, Congress has not done so. It is noteworthy that the Copeland fee award was for services rendered in an employment discrimination action, and that some of our most telling arguments for a market-value allowance the private enforcement scheme of Title VII 65 and congressional affirmation of fee grants to public interest law firms 66 were grounded in a perceived need for widespread citizen-litigation to translate a broad governmental goal into reality. 67 The instant suit, by contrast, involves the Privacy Act, which lacks any comparable background, and the attorney's fee provision of which 68 has the comparatively modest function of removing disincentives to the prosecution of individual actions. 69 26 Our holding, then, is very narrow. We deem it crucial that market-value attorney's fees are sought here, not by a private law firm or its public counterpart, but by a lay organization, to enable it to turn a profit on what distinctly was lawyers' work. We decide no more than that an above-cost allowance in these circumstances would be improper, and that the organization must be limited to recovery of the expense to which it was put in supplying the legal services in question. We remand the case to the District Court for computation and award of the amount thus due the union. 70 27 So ordered. 28