Opinion ID: 169435
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Defendants' Additional Arguments for Affirmance

Text: 52 The Defendants urge us to defer to their construction of the statute for two additional reasons: first, they say that the RECA attorney-fee limitation is subject to more than one interpretation because courts have interpreted the fee-shifting provision of 42 U.S.C. § 1988 to include attorney fees and expenses, and because the expenses an attorney will incur when representing a RECA claimant are indispensable to providing legal services; and second, they contend that it is unclear how the Plaintiffs' reference to the professional-responsibility rule that attorneys may not assume their clients' expenses supports the Plaintiffs' arguments, since the fact that clients were previously required to reimburse their attorneys for expenses suggests that expenses were part of the attorneys' fees. 53 The Defendants' second contention elides the point of the Plaintiffs' argument. The essence of this professional-responsibility rule is that an attorney was permitted to advance a client's expenses in the form of an interest-free loan so long as the client reimbursed the attorney when the attorney finished representing the client. The Plaintiffs are plainly arguing that, in light of this general rule that an attorney may not assume a client's expenses, to equate an interest-free loan that must be reimbursed with a fee for services rendered is to deny these words their ordinary meaning. 54 The Plaintiffs' argument is supported by several scholarly sources that clearly distinguish expenses and fees, therefore further underscoring the historical and lexical distinction between a fee for services rendered and reimbursement for costs incurred. See, e.g., Restatement (Third) of Law Governing Lawyers § 38 cmt. e (2000) (stating that [u]nder generally prevailing practice, the actual amount of disbursements to persons outside the office . . . are charges in addition to the lawyer's fee  and that [c]ourt costs and expenses of litigation . . . are normally payable by clients) (emphasis added); Robert L. Rossi, 1 Attorneys' Fees § 1:27 (3d ed.2006) (stating that [t]he client, and not the attorney, is ultimately liable for the reasonable and proper expenses incurred incident to the preparation and trial of a case, and thus an attorney may bind his client to pay for such expenses incurred by the attorney). 55 Even a common-law action for recovering a money debt recognized that owing another for work done is different from owing another for money paid: In the action of assumpsit, these [common counts inserted in a declaration in an action to recover a money debt] are as follows: . . . for work done; . . . for money paid. . . . Black's Law Dictionary 419 (4th ed.1968) (supplying the definition of [c]ommon counts). We could not merge these historically distinct concepts—paying another for the work he or she has done (i.e., the service) versus paying another for the money he or she has paid (i.e., the expense)—without ignoring the principle that words in a statute carry their ordinary meaning. 56 Notwithstanding both this historical backdrop and the dictionary's support for this argument, the district court rejected it because of the court's view that several jurisdictions have jettisoned the rule of champerty. The status of the rule of champerty, however, does not alleviate the problem with treating words that are historically different in meaning as synonyms. The rule's formulation clearly distinguishes between an attorney's fee for services and the reimbursement for expenses incurred incident to providing those services. The rule, regardless of its current prevalence in States' professional-responsibility codes, highlights the fact that a fee for services rendered is not the equivalent of reimbursement for costs incurred. 57 After rejecting this argument, the district court found traction in the Defendants' position that the RECA is analogous to fee-shifting statutes that include costs as part of the attorneys' fees. The court first reasoned that the Defendants' interpretation reflects Congress's unambiguous intent because Congress did not limit its language to exclude attorneys' expenses and include only attorneys' hourly wages. Dist. Ct. Order at 13. Yet the district court failed to recognize that neither did Congress expressly expand the fee limitation to apply to attorneys' expenses as well as attorneys' hourly wages—unless services rendered unequivocally means one or the other. Instead of evaluating this issue, as we did above, the district court continued by concluding that both the RECA's purpose and the case law interpreting fee-shifting statutes are consistent with the Defendants' interpretation of services rendered. 58 As only the Plaintiffs have recognized, however, § 1988 of the Civil Rights Act provides that courts may award a reasonable attorney's fee as part of the costs, whereas the RECA states that the representative of an individual may not receive, for services rendered in connection with the claim of an individual under this act, [a payment exceeding the percentages specified in the below subsections] . . . . (emphasis added). For one thing, we find unpersuasive the Defendants' attempt to interpret the RECA's fee provision by reference to another statute's completely different language. We also note that the Defendants fail to address why Congress used strikingly different language in the RECA and § 1988 fee provisions if it intended these provisions to mean the same thing. 59 Moreover, it is irrelevant here that both the RECA and the § 1988 attorney-fee sections define how to calculate the fees an attorney may receive under the Acts under similar headings (Attorney Fees in the RECA and Attorney's fees in § 1988), for we should look to the statutory definition of the term and begin with the ordinary meaning of that language rather than with the `ordinary meaning' of the term that Congress thought it advisable to define. United States v. Begay, 470 F.3d 964, 971 (10th Cir.2006). But instead of considering the meaning of the RECA's text and the several statutes examined above—statutes that actually use the same services rendered language that is at issue here—the Defendants and the district court found it sufficient to examine only 42 U.S.C. § 1988, a statute that is wholly different from the RECA in structure, history, and language. 60 The function of § 1988's fee-shifting provision is so dramatically different from the provision under consideration that it strains reason to conclude that § 1988 reveals the meaning of the RECA's services rendered language. While § 1988 was designed to incentivize attorneys to act as private attorneys general by bringing more federal lawsuits, the Defendants inform us that the RECA was designed to reduce the number of attorneys who represent radiation-exposure victims when legal representation is unnecessary and that the RECA fee limitation was designed to avoid diverting funds to non-claimants (an assertion we view to be incomplete). See S.Rep. 94-1011, at 5910, 5914, The Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act of 1976 (June 29, 1976) (stating that the purpose of allowing the prevailing party to recover the fee is to incentivize private citizens to act as private attorneys general in vindicating federal rights protected under the statute; that not to award fees in cases such as this would be tantamount to repealing the Act itself by frustrating its basic purpose; and that, appropriately applied, the fee award should function to attract competent counsel, but not produce windfalls to attorneys). See also H.R. Rep. 102-40(I), Civil Rights Act of 1991 (Apr. 24, 1991) (explaining that Title VII's fee-shifting provision, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(k), was intended to encourage private citizens to enforce the statute's guarantees and that if successful plaintiffs were forced to bear their own attorneys' fees, few aggrieved parties would be in the position to advance the public interest). 61 Again without referring to the RECA's language, the Defendants further support their arguments by claiming that the expenses incurred by a RECA claimant's attorney are necessary for the attorney to furnish effective representation. Given the alleged importance of these expenses, Defendants conclude that it is reasonable to infer that Congress intended to include expenses within the fee limitation. But with this note the Defendants have described almost any area of legal practice. As we discussed above, certainly one would not suggest that a trial attorney's payments to an expert witness, to the client's treating doctor to testify, and to the hospital for the client's medical records are less essential to effective representation than the expenses of a RECA claimant's attorney. A plaintiff will rarely have a legally cognizable claim without this information and testimony, and it would likely be malpractice for a defense attorney to forgo this type of investigation. 62 Procuring documents and hiring experts to give their opinions, and incurring the resulting expenses, are essential parts of representing a client in almost any area of law. Yet common meaning and the above federal statutes still maintain a clear distinction between compensation for services rendered and reimbursement for expenses. The Defendants' assertion that attorneys' expenses are especially essential in RECA claims is unpersuasive and certainly does not support altering the ordinary meaning of Congress's words. 63 Since we assume that Congress intended the words in the RECA to carry their ordinary, contemporary, common meaning, and since our review of the statute's text, purpose, and legislative history provides no indication that Congress intended to deviate from its longstanding distinction between and the common meaning of compensation for services rendered and reimbursement of expenses, we conclude that 28 C.F.R. § 79.74(b) contravenes Congress's unambiguous intent.