Opinion ID: 608803
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Mr. Kattan's Entitlement to Attorney's Fees

Text: 10 The HCPA provides, In any action or proceeding brought under this subsection, the court, in its discretion, may award reasonable attorneys' fees as part of costs to the parents or guardian of a handicapped child or youth who is the prevailing party. 20 U.S.C. § 1415(e)(4)(B). The District asserts that, in light of Kay v. Ehrler, an attorney representing himself is not eligible for a fee award under the HCPA. We do not find it necessary to consider this issue. We agree with the district court that the District of Columbia waived its argument against the availability of fee awards to pro se litigants by failing to raise it in 1988 in its original opposition to the Kattans' motion for fees. 11 The District of Columbia claims that the district court erred by rejecting its Rule 59(e) motion to alter or amend the judgment awarding fees to Mr. Kattan. In that motion, the District asserted that Kay v. Ehrler represented a change of law that it could not reasonably have anticipated, and that the Supreme Court decision required the district court to retract its award of fees for Mr. Kattan's services. The district court held that Kay was not an unanticipated change in the law and that the District had therefore waived its argument against Mr. Kattan's entitlement to attorney's fees by not raising it before judgment. 12 We affirm the district court's finding of a waiver. In analogous circumstances, this Court has recognized that a losing party may not use a Rule 59 motion to raise new issues that could have been raised previously. 13 Ordinarily Rule 59 motions for either a new trial or a rehearing are not granted by the District Court where they are used by a losing party to request the trial judge to reopen proceedings in order to consider a new defensive theory which could have been raised during the original proceedings. 14 Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. v. Renegotiation Board, 482 F.2d 710, 711 (D.C.Cir.1973), overruled on different grounds, 421 U.S. 168, 95 S.Ct. 1491, 44 L.Ed.2d 57 (1975). See also Fed. Deposit Ins. Corp. v. Meyer, 781 F.2d 1260, 1268 (7th Cir.1986) (Rule 59(e) motion cannot be used to raise arguments which could, and should, have been made before the judgment issued.). 15 In 1988, when it opposed the Kattans' application for attorneys' fees, the District of Columbia could have proffered a legitimate argument that such fees were not available to pro se litigants under the HCPA. Although the Supreme Court did not decide Kay until 1991, there was no reason in 1988 for the District of Columbia to assume that this Circuit had conclusively confirmed the availability of a fee award to a pro se litigant in an EHA suit or other civil rights case. 16 At the time, the only binding precedent in our Circuit on the issue of fee awards to lawyers representing themselves related to the fee-shifting provision of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Cuneo v. Rumsfeld, 553 F.2d 1360 (D.C.Cir.1977). That decision held that attorneys acting pro se could receive fees under FOIA. Id. at 1366. However, much of the Court's reasoning in that decision related specifically to the policy considerations underlying FOIA. Id. Consequently, the District of Columbia had no basis to believe that Cuneo settled the HCPA question. If the District wished to claim that [301 U.S.App.D.C. 377] Mr. Kattan was ineligible for attorney's fees under the HCPA, it should have attempted to distinguish Cuneo from the present case in the district court. Such an argument would have been far from frivolous. 17 Indeed, in 1984, similarly situated litigants, the defendants in a civil rights action, argued, despite this Circuit's decision in Cuneo, that a lawyer representing himself was not entitled to attorney's fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. Lawrence v. Staats, 586 F.Supp. 1375 (D.D.C.1984), aff'd sub nom. Lawrence v. Bowsher, 931 F.2d 1579 (D.C.Cir.1991) (on the grounds stated by Kay v. Ehrler). Not only did the defendants in Lawrence raise this issue--the district court agreed with them. Judge Flannery, in a well-reasoned opinion, explicitly distinguished cases permitting pro se attorneys' fees in FOIA suits from cases dealing with fee-shifting in civil rights actions. He cited a series of cases from other circuits holding that pro se plaintiffs were not entitled to attorneys' fees under § 1988, and he stated: 18 The court finds the statutory analysis and reasoning of these cases persuasive, and does not believe that this Circuit's allowance of attorney fees to pro se litigants in FOIA cases changes the analysis, since the intent of Congress and purpose of FOIA and its fee provisions differ significantly from the intent and purposes of §§ 1988 and [42 U.S.C. s] 2000e-5(k). 19 Id. at 1379. 20 In the present case, the District of Columbia was in a better position than were the defendants in Lawrence to realize that a challenge to a pro se plaintiff's attorney's fees might succeed, for the District could look to Lawrence itself as an example. It is also worth noting that the Kattans flagged the issue in a footnote in their application for fees. Nevertheless, in its opposition to the Kattans' application, the District chose not to raise the question of the availability of fees for pro se litigants. We therefore agree with the district court that the District of Columbia waived the issue of Mr. Kattan's eligibility for fees by not raising it in a timely manner. The district court clearly did not abuse its discretion by denying the District's Rule 59(e) motion. 21 Alternatively, the District of Columbia asserts that we should, in light of the change in law brought about by Kay v. Ehrler, use our power under 28 U.S.C. § 2106 to review the issue of a pro se litigant's eligibility for fees. That section states, The Supreme Court or any other court of appellate jurisdiction may ... vacate, set aside or reverse any judgment, decree, or order of a court lawfully brought before it for review and direct the entry of such appropriate judgment, decree or order ... as may be just under the circumstances. 22 The District is correct that although we do not ordinarily pass on issues that a party failed to raise in a timely fashion in the district court, we sometimes do review such issues when a supervening decision changes the law in the appellant's favor. On occasion, courts of appeals have justified this practice partly on the basis of 28 U.S.C. § 2106. See, e.g., Pendergrast v. United States, 416 F.2d 776, 780-81 & n. 19 (D.C.Cir.1969), cert. denied, 395 U.S. 926, 89 S.Ct. 1782, 23 L.Ed.2d 243 (1969). More often, appeals courts seem to have relied primarily on their intrinsic powers to achieve a just resolution. The Supreme Court noted long ago: 23 We have frequently held that in the exercise of our appellate jurisdiction we have power not only to correct error in the judgment under review but to make such disposition of the case as justice requires. An in determining what justice does require, the Court is bound to consider any change, either in fact or in law, which has supervened since the judgment was entered. 24 Patterson v. Alabama, 294 U.S. 600, 607, 55 S.Ct. 575, 578, 79 L.Ed. 1082 (1935). See also, Hormel v. Helvering, 312 U.S. 552, 558, 61 S.Ct. 719, 722, 85 L.Ed. 1037 (1941) ([Our decisions], while recognizing the desirability and existence of a general practice under which appellate courts confine themselves to the issues raised below, nevertheless do not lose sight of the fact that such appellate practice should not be applied where the obvious result would be a plain miscarriage of justice.); Leary v. United States, 395 U.S. 6, 27-28, 89 S.Ct. 1532, 1543-44, 23 [301 U.S.App.D.C. 378] L.Ed.2d 57 (1969); United States v. Byers, 740 F.2d 1104, 1115-16 n. 11 (D.C.Cir.1984). 25 In each of the cases cited above, the intervening decision enunciated a new legal principle that was previously unavailable to the appellant, for all practical purposes. The present case, on the other hand, does not fit this paradigm. As we explained above, the District of Columbia could have validly disputed Mr. Kattan's entitlement to fees before the Supreme Court decided Kay v. Ehrler. Absent exceptional circumstances, the court of appeals is not a forum in which a litigant can present legal theories that it neglected to raise in a timely manner in proceedings below. See Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, U.S. Dep't of Labor v. Edward Minte Co., 803 F.2d 731, 736 (D.C.Cir.1986). No such exceptional circumstances exist in this case.