Opinion ID: 753751
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Attorney's Fees for Unsuccessful Arguments

Text: 14 In Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983), the Supreme Court set forth the legal principles governing the determination of attorney's fee awards under § 1988. Initially, the court must determine a lodestar amount by multiplying the number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation by a reasonable hourly rate. Id. at 433, 103 S.Ct. at 1939. The court may then reduce or augment the lodestar amount by considering twelve other factors, see id. at 430 n. 3, 103 S.Ct. at 1938 n. 3, commonly known as the Hensley factors. The most important of these factors is the results obtained; this factor becomes particularly significant in cases where a technically prevailing party succeeds on only some of his claims for relief. See id. at 434, 103 S.Ct. at 1939-40; see also Farrar v. Hobby, 506 U.S. 103, 114-16, 113 S.Ct. 566, 574-76, 121 L.Ed.2d 494 (1992) (recognizing that when a prevailing party recovers only nominal damages because of his failure to prove an essential element of his claim for monetary relief, the only reasonable fee is usually no fee at all) (citation omitted). 15 The Hensley Court considered the results obtained question in the context of determining whether a district court could award fees to a prevailing party for time spent on claims that proved unsuccessful. Id. at 426, 103 S.Ct. at 1935-36. The Court recognized that a prevailing plaintiff was not entitled to fees for time expended pursuing unsuccessful claims that were unrelated to those claims on which the plaintiff ultimately prevailed. Id. at 434-35, 103 S.Ct. at 1939-40 ([U]nrelated claims [must] be treated as if they had been raised in separate lawsuits, and therefore no fee may be awarded for services on the unsuccessful claim.). However, Hensley makes clear that when claims are interrelated, as is often the case in civil rights litigation, time spent pursuing an unsuccessful claim may be compensable if it also contributed to the success of other claims. Id. at 435, 103 S.Ct. at 1940. In such cases, [m]uch of counsel's time will be devoted generally to the litigation as a whole, making it difficult to divide the hours expended on a claim-by-claim basis. Such a lawsuit cannot be viewed as a series of discrete claims. Instead the district court should focus on the significance of the overall relief obtained by the plaintiff in relation to the hours reasonably expended on the litigation. Id. 16 In the context of partial recovery cases, we have interpreted Hensley to permit attorney's fees for unsuccessful claims when those claims involved a common core of facts or related legal theories. See, e.g., Spanish Action Comm. v. City of Chicago, 811 F.2d 1129, 1133 (7th Cir.1987). For example, we have affirmed a district court's award of fees for time spent pursuing an unsuccessful employment discrimination claim, brought in tandem with a successful retaliation claim, because the court found that the successful claim for retaliatory discharge could not have been tried effectively without reviewing and analyzing the facts that led to the underlying discrimination charge. Merriweather v. Family Dollar Stores, 103 F.3d 576, 584 (7th Cir.1996). Hensley's rejection of the mechanical claim-chopping approach, see Lenard v. Argento, 808 F.2d 1242, 1245 (7th Cir.1987), has led us to an approach that is more in tune with the realities of litigation, in which we focus on the overall success of the plaintiff rather than the success or failure of each of the plaintiff's causes of action: 17 For tactical reasons and out of caution lawyers often try to state their client's claim in a number of different ways, some of which may fall by the wayside as the litigation proceeds. The lawyer has no right to advance a theory that is completely groundless or has no factual basis, but if he presents a congeries of theories each legally and factually plausible, he is not to be penalized just because some, or even all but one, are rejected, provided that the one or ones that succeed give him all that he reasonably could have asked for. 18 Id. at 1245-46. 19 We have analogized from Hensley's approach concerning related claims to losing arguments in support of successful claims. In Kurowski v. Krajewski, 848 F.2d 767, 776 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 926, 109 S.Ct. 309, 102 L.Ed.2d 328 (1988), we addressed the defendant's contention that unproductive legal research in support of a fully successful claim was not compensable under § 1988. We rejected that argument, even though some of the legal research never made its way to trial, because Hensley says that the court should subtract time for losing claims, but a losing argument in support of a successful claim for relief is fully compensable time. Id.; see also Pressley v. Haeger, 977 F.2d 295, 298 (7th Cir.1992) (Hensley permits the court to award fees for losing arguments in support of prevailing claims, but not for losing claims.). Accordingly, just as Hensley dictates that fees incurred on unsuccessful but related claims may be compensable, we have recognized that courts may award fees for time reasonably spent on an unsuccessful argument in support of a successful claim. As we noted in People Who Care v. Rockford Board of Education, 90 F.3d 1307, 1314 (7th Cir.1996), the touchstone in such a case is not whether a particular argument was successful, but rather whether it was reasonable. See also Cabrales v. County of Los Angeles, 935 F.2d 1050, 1053 (9th Cir.1991) (If a plaintiff ultimately wins on a particular claim, she is entitled to all attorney's fees reasonably expended in pursuing that claim-even though she may have suffered some adverse rulings.). 20 Applying these principles to the instant case, we conclude that the district court erred in denying Jaffee all fees incurred in arguing against the psychotherapist privilege solely because that argument did not contribute to her ultimately successful claim. As we have explained, an unsuccessful but reasonable argument in support of a successful claim may be compensable. Jaffee attempted to introduce evidence of Redmond's conversations with a social worker in order to establish the objective unreasonableness of Redmond's actions, which is the standard of liability for Jaffee's § 1983 claim. Two trials and two appeals later, Jaffee prevailed on her § 1983 claim; the adverse rulings that she suffered along the way were merely temporary setbacks on her way to victory. See id. That these setbacks did not contribute to Jaffee's ultimate success is not completely determinative; what is critical is whether the argument, and the extent to which Jaffee pursued it, was reasonable. 21 The district court has already found that it was reasonable, as a general matter, for Jaffee to argue against the evidentiary privilege; absent such a finding, the court could not have awarded fees to Jaffee for arguing against the privilege at the first trial itself. What remains for the district court to determine on remand is whether all of the fees incurred in support of this generally reasonable argument were themselves reasonably incurred. While we conclude under Hensley that the court must consider awarding fees for the pursuit of this argument, the reasonableness of particular fees is a determination that remains within the discretion of the experienced district court judge. See, e.g., Zagorski v. Midwest Billing Servs., 128 F.3d 1164, 1167 (7th Cir.1997) (Of course, the trial court, who enjoy[s] a decided advantage over appellate courts in calculating fee awards, retains a great deal of discretion in fixing the amount of the final award.) (per curiam) (alteration in original) (internal quotation and citation omitted). 22 The appellees seek to avoid application of the above principles and make two arguments in support of the district court's fee award. First, they emphasize the magnitude of the fees generated by Jaffee's attorneys in arguing against the psychotherapist privilege. According to the appellees, Jaffee's attorneys incurred over $331,000 in fees arguing against the privilege; this was a major component of the over $900,000 in fees that Jaffee requested, and it dwarfed the $100,000 damage award that she received. Pointing out the fact-specific nature of attorney's fees determinations, see Hensley, 461 U.S. at 429, 103 S.Ct. at 1937 (The amount of the fee, of course, must be determined on the facts of each case.), they hope to distinguish Kurowski, in which the fees incurred on unsuccessful arguments amounted to a few hours' research and the fee request was modest as requests go in civil rights litigation. Kurowski, 848 F.2d at 776. 23 We do not believe that factual distinctions between this case and Kurowski alter our legal determination that a losing argument in support of a successful claim for relief is fully compensable time. Id. Ten hours of unsuccessful research may not be compensable in one case, whereas 100 hours may be compensable in another. The key is whether those hours, in the judgment of the district court, were reasonably spent in the context of the entire litigation: 24 Cases may be overstaffed, and the skill and experience of lawyers vary widely. Counsel for the prevailing party should make a good-faith effort to exclude from a fee request hours that are excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary, just as a lawyer in private practice ethically is obligated to exclude such hours from his fee submission. 25 Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434, 103 S.Ct. at 1939-40. The fact that Jaffee's lawyers may have waged an all-out war in arguing against the privilege does not, in and of itself, distinguish this case from Kurowski. In each case, if the fees incurred in support of the unsuccessful argument were reasonable, the district court may make an appropriate award. On remand, the district court may well find that some of the fees incurred in arguing against the privilege were unreasonable, that Jaffee's attorneys spent more time on the issue than was warranted. This is very different, however, from a decision that all such fees must be categorically denied because they were incurred in support of a losing argument. 26 The appellees' second argument in this context points to our language in Pressley, where we stated that Hensley permits the court to award fees for losing arguments in support of prevailing claims. 977 F.2d at 298. While they concede that this language would support an award of fees for a losing argument, the appellees cling to our use of the word permits to argue that the district court, in its discretion, can refuse to award fees in such circumstances. This argument misapprehends the nature of the discretion afforded the district court. A district court can deny fees in such circumstances if it determines that the amount of fees, or a portion of that amount, was not reasonably incurred. Such a decision would be a reasonable exercise of the court's discretion, in light of its superior understanding of the litigation and the facts of the case. However, as we have indicated, the district court in this case did not engage in an exercise of discretion; rather, it denied fees for the privilege battles due to a mistaken legal conclusion. Accordingly, we reject this argument. 1