Opinion ID: 158488
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: From Jurisdiction to Claims Processing

Text: Recognizing that the district court's holding that it lacked jurisdiction is in error, one might try to re-conceive its decision as resting on the claims processing rule that appellate fees should be awarded by the court of appeals, not the district court. Of course this isn't the basis of the district court's holding or the court's decision today. But even if it were, it would be insufficient to sustain the denial of fees in this particular case. When it comes to the questions whether and when a plaintiff may seek appellate fees from district courts, we've sent mixed messages. In Hoyt, the plaintiff won in the district court and successfully defended her judgment on appeal. Because of this, everything needed to determine whether plaintiff qualified as a prevailing party as well as the degree of her success and whether she achieved success on all of her claims, the critical Hensley inquiries, was before us. We were well equipped in these circumstances to deal with a fee request for work done in connection with the appeal and we held that, in these circumstances, appellate fee award applications are best directed to us. Yet, in Crumpacker v. Kansas Department of Human Resources, 474 F.3d 747, 756 (10th Cir.2007), we affirmed a district court's fee award that included fees associated with the plaintiff's defense of an interlocutory appeal. We did so explaining that the appeal in question didn't come at the end of the case (as in Hoyt ) but in the middle of things, before the case reached its end and before the Hensley inquiries (was plaintiff a prevailing party? what degree of success did she achieve?) could be completed, or even begun. In these circumstances, we held it was appropriate for the district court to award appellate fees. Id. at 756. Given the mixed messages we've sent about the propriety of district courts awarding appellate fees, what is a plaintiffor a district courtto do? Especially where, as here, the case falls somewhere in between Hoyt and Crumpacker ? Unlike Hoyt, the appeal in this case didn't come at the end of all trial court proceedings, when all the information necessary to undertake the Hensley inquiries was before us. In Ms. Flitton's appeal, there's simply no way we could've awarded fees; too much remained to be done on remand before anyone could know what degree of success she would ultimately obtain. But unlike Crumpacker, the appeal in this case did resolve at least one Hensley question: it made clear that Ms. Flitton was a prevailing party by reinstating the jury's verdict in her favor on the retaliation claim, even though the degree of her success couldn't be ascertained until after further proceedings on remand. No doubt, a great many other appeals from JMOL decisionsor summary judgment, or dismissals under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)will fall in the cracks between Hoyt and Crumpacker, as this one does. Our mixed messages, then, leave a great many cases in a legal limbo. While certain other circuits, like the Eighth and Eleventh, have adopted formal rules of court to alert potentially prevailing parties where to file their attorney fee claims, we haven't. Perhaps we should. But in the absence of a clear claims processing rule or case law precedent controlling the plaintiffs' circumstances, we should not strain to deny fees. Congress has directed the federal courts to calculate a fair award for the prevailing party in civil rights cases. It would be a procedural contortion, in defiance of that statutory mandate to deny a prevailing plaintiff her fees simply for failing to imagine in advance what administrative claims processing rule we might adopt. Little Rock Sch. Dist., 127 F.3d at 697. If the plaintiff hasn't defied a clearly applicable rule or precedent, she should not be denied the fees Congress has authorized. Unless we afford litigants the benefit of clarity, they should receive the benefit of the doubt. Not only do we lack any precedent or rule requiring plaintiffs in Ms. Flitton's circumstance to seek fees in the first instance from us. Neither is it at all clear why we should want to adopt such a claims processing procedure. While Ms. Flitton's appeal did answer the threshold Hensley inquiry, establishing her as a prevailing party, it left the question what claims she would ultimately succeed on, as well as the degree of success she'd ultimately achieve, undecideddiscernable only after extensive further proceedings in the district court. In such circumstances (unlike those in Hoyt ), a rule requiring a plaintiff to apply for appellate fees from us would be pointless. We could do no more than remand the fee matter, along with the merits, to the district court for resolution at the end of its proceedings. We could order, then, no more than what Ms. Flitton herself sought when she applied for fees at the conclusion of her case. The law does not normally require people to do pointless thingsand surely it shouldn't do so. Yet, requiring a plaintiff in Ms. Flitton's shoes to file a piece of paper with us seeking fees at the time of her appeal could be no more than that: at best, a pointless exercise; at worst, a hidden trap to ensnare the unwary and deny them what Congress has said they should receive. The court today worries that allowing a district court to award appellate fees in this case would risk strip[ping] this court of its discretion to award appeal-related fees. Maj. Op. at ___. But the court's concern seems to presume that this court has some rule absolutely forbidding district courts from considering appellate fees, which Crumpacker makes manifest we don't. And its worry proves too much because it would require us not just to deny fees here but also to overrule Crumpacker, which we can't. Besides, allowing the district court to assess fees in this case would hardly leave this court powerless: we always possess the power to review on appeal the reasonableness of any award the district court may authorize (indeed, in Crumpacker we held that we will review the district court's award of appellate fees de novo, 474 F.3d at 756). It's unclear what's wrong with that arrangement. From Section II.D, I respectfully dissent.