Opinion ID: 429227
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Award of Attorney's Fees to Plaintiff.

Text: 54 A plaintiff will be considered a prevailing party and entitled to reasonable attorney's fees under section 1988 if the plaintiff has succeeded  'on any significant issue in litigation which achieves some of the benefit the part[y] sought in bringing the suit.'  Hensley v. Eckerhart, --- U.S. ----, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 1939, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983) (quoting Nadeau v. Helgemoe, 581 F.2d 275, 278-79 (1st Cir.1978)). That has been the standard adopted in this circuit, Lenard v. Argento, 699 F.2d 874, 899 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 104 S.Ct. 69, 78 L.Ed.2d 84 (1983); Busche v. Burkee, 649 F.2d 509, 521 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 897, 102 S.Ct. 396, 70 L.Ed.2d 212 (1981), and we believe the district court correctly applied it in this case. The plaintiff was successful on her central claim for relief and thus is entitled to reasonable attorney's fees. 55 The considerations for determining the amount of reasonable attorney's fees were only recently described by the United States Supreme Court in Hensley v. Eckerhart, --- U.S. ----, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983), a case decided after the district court here issued its opinion. In determining what constitutes a reasonable attorney's fee, the trial judge is to have considerable discretion. Certain adjustments, however, are required as a matter of law. One of these requirements, announced in Hensley, is that if the plaintiff has succeeded on only some of his or her claims for relief, the plaintiff may not recover fees for time expended on distinctly different claims for relief that are based on different facts and legal theories than the successful claims. 103 S.Ct. at 1940. Work on unsuccessful, unrelated claims for relief 56 cannot be deemed to have been expended in pursuit of the ultimate result achieved. Davis v. County of Los Angeles, 8 E.P.D. p 9444, at 5049 (CDCal.1974). The congressional intent to limit awards to prevailing parties requires that these unrelated claims be treated as if they had been raised in separate lawsuits, and therefore no fee may be awarded for services on the unsuccessful claim. 57 Id. (footnote omitted). 58 Because Hensley only disapproves of awarding attorney's fees for time spent on unsuccessful claims for relief that are unrelated to successful claims, however, time spent on unsuccessful, related claims may be compensated. 14 103 S.Ct. at 1940. Hensley recognizes that there is no certain method of determining when claims are 'related' or 'unrelated.'  Id. at 1941 n. 12. The case instructs, however, that the starting point for separating an unrelated, unsuccessful claim from a related, unsuccessful claim is to determine whether a particular unsuccessful claim shares a common core of facts with the successful claim or is based on a related legal theory. 15 Id. We believe a useful tool for making this determination is to focus on whether the claims seek relief for essentially the same course of conduct. Under this analysis, an unsuccessful claim will be unrelated to a successful claim when the relief sought on the unsuccessful claim is intended to remedy a course of conduct entirely distinct and separate from the course of conduct that gave rise to the injury on which the relief granted is premised. 59 We believe that plaintiff's unsuccessful false arrest and excessive force claims requested relief for courses of conduct independent of plaintiff's strip search claim. The first two claims requested relief only from the two arresting officers, not from the City, for damages flowing from the conduct surrounding the arrest itself; the challenged conduct was that the arrest was undertaken without probable cause and was accomplished with excessive force. The strip search claim, on the other hand, challenged only the conduct relating to the search, namely, that the strip search was constitutionally unreasonable and discriminatory. Because the relief requested on the false arrest and excessive force claims corresponds to courses of conduct distinctly different from that relating to the strip search claim, the hours spent on these unsuccessful claims must be excluded in considering the amount of a reasonable attorney's fee. 16 103 S.Ct. at 1943. We therefore uphold the district court's determination that no fees should be awarded for time spent on the unsuccessful and unrelated false arrest and excessive force claims for relief. 17 60 We believe the district court erred, however, in not allowing plaintiff to recover fees for the time spent litigating the strip search claim against the individual defendants. Regardless which of the various definitions of claim courts adopt for use in the attorney's fees context, 18 we believe that the award of attorney's fees for time expended in remedying illegal conduct should not turn on whether only some or all of the defendants named in connection with the conduct are ultimately held liable. Hensley clearly permits attorney's fees to be awarded for time spent relating to matters not distinctly different from those on which the plaintiff ultimately succeeds. When defendants are not named frivolously in connection with the same illegal conduct, it follows that the matters involving the different defendants will always be related. Here, for example, plaintiff's strip search claim sought relief for the same constitutionally infirm course of conduct vis-a-vis the individual defendants as the City. The only difference in the tenor of the claim against the individual defendants was that the individual defendants were sued under a different standard of liability than the City. 61 Although the Supreme Court in Hensley did not specifically address situations in which a plaintiff brings a claim against several defendants but obtains relief from only some of them, we have already observed that the Court's discussion of awards of attorney's fees is structured in terms of compensable claims for relief. 19 This language suggests that all time spent in pursuit of relief for the same illegal conduct should be considered in awarding attorney's fees once the relief sought is obtained, regardless whether the plaintiff has succeeded in obtaining the relief from only some and not all of the defendants named in connection with the conduct. Once the relief sought is obtained, the plaintiff will have succeeded. It would therefore be illogical to define compensable claims for relief in terms of defendants, because once the plaintiff's claim succeeds against one defendant, the plaintiff will have achieved full relief for the illegal course of conduct notwithstanding the plaintiff's failure to obtain relief from each and every defendant. A recovery against more than one of the defendants will not enhance the amount of the damage award. We hold that when, as here, a plaintiff raises a claim for relief that relates to several defendants, not all of whom are held liable, the total time expended on the claim for relief should be counted in awarding the plaintiff attorney's fees so long as the defendants from whom plaintiff did not obtain relief were not named frivolously. In these circumstances, the total time expended on the claim can thus be said to have been in pursuit of the ultimate result achieved of obtaining relief on the claim, 103 S.Ct. at 1940 (quoting Davis v. City of Los Angeles, 8 E.P.D. p 9444, at 5049 (C.D.Cal.1974)), and it matters not that the plaintiff was unsuccessful as to some of the defendants. The plaintiff will have obtained all the relief sought in connection with the illegal conduct. 62 We have already determined that plaintiff's strip search claim against the individual defendants was not brought frivolously; plaintiff should therefore be compensated by the City for all time expended in litigating the strip search claim, since the plaintiff was completely successful in obtaining relief for the illegal conduct connected with the claim. 20 Services at all stages of the litigation on this claim are compensable, including time expended on the petition for mandamus, since that effort was intimately connected with the interlocutory appeal of the new trial order on which plaintiff was successful. See Tikalsky v. City of Chicago, Nos. 81-1492, 81-8071 (7th Cir. Nov. 2, 1981) (Order). 63 Because the district court has a superior understanding of the litigation, Hensley v. Eckerhart, 103 S.Ct. at 1941, and can best assess the experience and skill of plaintiff's attorneys, we remand the case to the district court for recalculation of the award in light of the views expressed above. The determination of the amount of reasonable attorney's fees is left to the sound discretion of the district court. We offer but a few more guidelines. As we suggested in Muscare v. Quinn, 614 F.2d 577, 581 (7th Cir.1980), the court might well begin by determining the number of hours actually worked that were reasonably necessary to the successful claim, thereby excluding excessive or redundant time, and then multiplying this figure by a reasonable hourly rate for each attorney who worked on the case. The reasonableness of the hourly rate should be measured according to the normal rate in the legal community for substantially similar work by competent practitioners. McCann v. Coughlin, 698 F.2d 112, 130 (2d Cir.1983). The resulting amount can then be adjusted according to several factors, see Hensley v. Eckerhart, 103 S.Ct. at 1937 n. 3; Johnson ex rel. Johnson v. Brelje, 701 F.2d 1201, 1212 (7th Cir.1983), including the experience of the attorneys, the difficulty of the questions presented, the customary fee, and whether the fee is fixed or contingent. In particular, Hensley emphasizes that courts must give considerable attention to the relationship between the extent of success and the amount of the fee award, 103 S.Ct. at 1942, especially when the plaintiff has succeeded on only some of his or her claims. If the trial court determines that the amount of the fee after the initial calculations is unreasonable in light of the level of success, then it should make an upward or downward adjustment. Finally, the court should provide a clear explanation of its reasons for the amount of the award it grants. Here the district court gave an explanation for some of its findings but failed to discuss others adequately. 64