Opinion ID: 759223
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Fees for Gierlinger's Original Attorney

Text: 97 The district court denied Gierlinger all fees for services performed by Thibodeau, her first attorney, stating only that the request for fees founded upon hours expended by Thibodeau represents a request for redundant, unnecessary, and unavailing work. Posttrial Order at 13. No explanation was provided by the district court, and we are forced to speculate in our attempt to reconcile this assessment with the record, for Thibodeau's work is clearly reflected in Gierlinger's second amended complaint, which provided the framework for the litigation. 98 Thibodeau drafted both the original complaint and the first amended complaint. As described in Part I.C. above, when the individual defendants contended that the first amended complaint did not sufficiently describe the conduct attributed to each individual, the district court agreed and granted Gierlinger leave to file a second amended complaint. The second amended complaint was filed by Pottle, Thibodeau having recently left the private practice of law. It is clear, however, that most of the work reflected in the second amended complaint was the work of Thibodeau, not Pottle. Both the first and second amended complaints were 32-paragraph pleadings stating five claims for relief, including one claim under Title VII, one under § 1983, and three under state law. The principal difference was that in p 4, which in both pleadings identified the defendants, the second amended complaint summarized the conduct attributed to each individual defendant. An additional difference was that three of the five ad damnum paragraphs of the first amended complaint were revised in the second to omit the phrase punitive damages in the amount of $500,000. In all other respects, the second amended complaint was virtually verbatim the same as the first amended complaint. (Indeed, so similar are the two pleadings that the parties included only the first amended complaint in their joint appendix on this appeal, and they called it, in the table of contents, the second.) 99 Further, for his services from the time of his entry into the case through the filing of the second amended complaint, Pottle billed only 12.3 hours, in which he apparently, inter alia, conferred with his client, familiarized himself with the case, and drafted particularized descriptions of the conduct attributed to each of the nine individual defendants. It hardly seems that he would have had time within those 12.3 hours to, in addition, redo the substantial drafting job already done by Thibodeau in the first amended complaint. We see no basis on which the court could reasonably find Thibodeau's work redundant. 100 It is hypothetically possible that the court viewed Thibodeau's work as unnecessary or unavailing because the first amended complaint asserted claims against defendants other than Gleason, and because as to those defendants Gierlinger did not succeed. However, this possibility seems inconsistent with the record, for a prevailing plaintiff should be compensated even for work done in connection with an unsuccessful claim if that claim was intertwined with the claim on which she succeeded, see, e.g., Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. at 433-37, 103 S.Ct. 1933; LeBlanc-Sternberg v. Fletcher, 143 F.3d at 762; Reed v. A.W. Lawrence & Co., 95 F.3d 1170, 1183 (2d Cir.1996), and the district court found--no doubt on this basis--that all of the time spent by Pottle in pretrial discovery and preparation for the first trial (while many defendants other than Gleason remained in the case) was reasonable and necessary. 101 In short, we see no basis on which the time spent by Thibodeau in drafting the initial complaints and in pursuit of the case thereafter--at least prior to the defense motions to dismiss--could reasonably have been deemed duplicative, unreasonable, or unnecessary. 102 It is also possible that some of the time spent by Thibodeau in defending the first amended complaint against defendants' motions to dismiss--for example, NYSP's motion to dismiss the § 1983 claim--may properly be viewed as unreasonable. See, e.g., Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, 491 U.S. 58, 64, 71, 109 S.Ct. 2304, 105 L.Ed.2d 45 (1989) (neither a state agency nor a state official sued in his official capacity is a person within the meaning of § 1983) (decided six days after this suit was commenced). However, the opposition to defendants' motions consumed only 13.8 of Thibodeau's total 39 hours, and it is unclear how much of even those 13.8 hours were devoted to work that was not reasonably necessary. 103 We conclude that the denial of fees for Thibodeau's work should be vacated, and we remand for an award of fees for at least 25.2 hours of her services. Gierlinger is free on remand to submit more informative evidence as to the nature of Thibodeau's services for the remaining 13.8 hours.