Opinion ID: 2314184
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Reasonableness and Documentation Requirements

Text: As already noted, a prevailing party ordinarily is entitled to an award of attorneys' fees under § 1988 unless special circumstances exist that would render such an award unjust. Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, 390 U.S. 400, 402, 88 S.Ct. 964, 966, 19 L.Ed.2d 1263 (1968). However, prevailing party status alone is not sufficient to support an award of attorneys' fees. In order to recover attorneys' fees from an adversary, a prevailing party must carry the burden of establishing that the amounts sought are reasonable. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 433-34, 103 S.Ct. at 1939-40. The starting point or lodestar for determining the reasonableness of a fee is the number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 433, 103 S.Ct. at 1939. Therefore, a fee application must be accompanied by documentation that is: sufficient to satisfy the court, or indeed a client, that the hours expended were actual, nonduplicative and reasonable, ... and to apprise the court of the nature of the activity and the claim on which the hours were spent. Ackerman v. Western Elec. Co., Inc., 643 F.Supp. 836, 862 (N.D.Cal.1986), aff'd, 860 F.2d 1514 (9th Cir.1988) (citations omitted). Such documentation is particularly important where the prevailing plaintiff does not succeed on all of the claims asserted. In such mixed success cases, hours spent on unsuccessful claims must be excluded from fee computations if those claims are separate and distinct from the successful claims, and the fee awarded should be limited to that which is reasonable in relation to the result achieved. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434-35, 440, 103 S.Ct. at 1939-40, 1943; Nadeau, 581 F.2d at 279. Furthermore, regardless of the degree of success, prevailing parties are not entitled to awards for hours that are duplicative, unproductive, excessive or unnecessary. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434, 103 S.Ct. at 1939-40. Since such time is not properly billed to one's client [it is] not properly billed to one's adversary pursuant to statutory authority. Copeland v. Marshall, 641 F.2d 880, 891 (D.C.Cir.1980) (en banc) (emphasis in original). In order to ensure that the information presented is reliable and sufficiently detailed so that the reasonableness of the fee claimed may be challenged by the adversary and evaluated by the court, the First Circuit has prescribed certain criteria that must be adhered to in documenting fee requests under § 1988. Specifically, it requires that fee petitions be accompanied by contemporaneous time records reflecting the nature of the task performed and who performed it. Grendel's Den v. Larkin, 749 F.2d 945, 951-52 (1st Cir.1984); Hensley, 461 U.S. at 433, 103 S.Ct. at 1939. Such records must be adequate to permit an allocation of time among successful claims and separate claims that were unsuccessful. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434-35, 103 S.Ct. at 1939-40; Nadeau, 581 F.2d at 279; see Culebras Enter. Corp. v. Rivera-Rios, 846 F.2d 94, 102 (1st Cir.1988). Furthermore, when multiple plaintiffs are involved, the records must provide a basis for apportioning the hours devoted to the claims of those who succeeded and the hours spent on the claims of those who did not. Nadeau, 581 F.2d at 278-79 (discussing cases in which some but not all plaintiffs obtain relief); see Perkins v. Cross, 728 F.2d 1099, 1100 (8th Cir.1984). In addition, when more than one attorney represents a plaintiff, the records must contain a convincing description of the division of labor so that it can be determined whether and to what extent the efforts of various counsel were duplicative. See Furtado v. Bishop, 635 F.2d 915, 922 (1st Cir.1980). Failure to comply with these requirements is a basis for drastically reducing or, in extreme cases, completely disallowing an award of attorneys' fees. Thus, the First Circuit has said: henceforth, in cases involving fee applications for services rendered after the date of this opinion, the absence of detailed contemporaneous time records, except in extraordinary circumstances, will call for a substantial reduction in any award or, in egregious cases, disallowance. Grendel's Den, 749 F.2d at 952 (emphasis added); see also Nat'l Ass'n of Concerned Veterans v. Secretary of Defense, 675 F.2d 1319, 1331 n.19 (D.C.Cir.1982) (Where a fee submission is manifestly inadequate, the District Court has no obligation to proceed further and denial is appropriate.). In addition, total disallowance may be justified when the application is grossly and intolerably exaggerated, or manifestly filed in bad faith. Jordan v. United States Dep't of Justice, 691 F.2d 514, 518 (D.C.Cir.1982) (footnotes omitted). Thus, the lack of a good faith effort to eliminate time expended on separate unsuccessful claims or on behalf of unsuccessful litigants or to exclude hours which are excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary may constitute the kind of special circumstance that warrants complete denial of a fee request. Lewis v. Kendrick, 944 F.2d 949, 957 (1st Cir.1991) (quoting Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434, 103 S.Ct. at 1939-40). In Lewis, the court cited, with approval, a Seventh Circuit decision that denied a fee award even though there was a recovery saying: If, as appellant argues, the Court were required to award a reasonable fee when an outrageously unreasonable one has been asked for, claimants would be encouraged to make unreasonable demands, knowing that the only unfavorable consequence of such misconduct would be reduction of their fee to what they should have asked for in the first place .... A request for attorney's fees is required to be in good faith and in reasonable compliance with judicial pronouncements, and not an opening gambit in negotiations to reach an ultimate result. The statute give us discretion, 42 U.S.C. § 1988, and the departure here was too extreme to be tolerated. Lewis, 944 F.2d at 958. Having recited the applicable principles, the Court must now apply them to the plaintiffs' fee application.