Opinion ID: 198201
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Catalyst Test.

Text: 18 The appellant's fallback position rests on the catalyst theory. To achieve prevailing party status under this theory, a fee-seeker must demonstrate that his action served a provocative function in the calculus of relief, see Guglietti, 900 F.2d at 401, or, stated another way, that it act[ed] as a 'catalyst' in prompting defendants to take action to meet plaintiff's claims, Nadeau, 581 F.2d at 279. If this condition is met, and the action taken is material, then the plaintiff will be deemed a prevailing party despite the lack of judicial involvement in the result. Id. 6 19 Almost by definition, causation questions are fact-contingent, see, e.g., Peckham v. Continental Casualty Ins. Co., 895 F.2d 830, 837 (1st Cir.1990), and are best visualized from a trial court's more intimate perspective. The trial court often is in the best position to sort out coincidence from effect. Langton, 928 F.2d at 1225. Even in a situation where some of the critical events took place in an administrative forum, the trial court is closer to the matter than is an appellate tribunal. Consequently, we afford deferential review to such determinations, setting them aside only for abuse of discretion. See id. 20 The appellant posits that the filing of his second due process request brought about a beneficial result (additional compensatory education) that he otherwise would not have obtained. In its fee-denial order, the district court rejected this thesis. The court appropriately referenced the context in which the parties forged the Agreement to demonstrate why the two additional years of compensatory education were not causally linked to the due process request. It then stated: 21 Adams obtained nothing in the ... settlement agreement that he would not have obtained had he made a reasonable effort to resolve the situation amicably in 1993, rather than: (1) invoke the administrative remedies available under the IDEA; and (2) interpose what was undeniably an unreasonable condition of settlement (i.e. full implementation of an unmodified IEP while he was in SHU). 22 The appellant vigorously disputes this determination. To bolster his view, he adverts to occasions during the course of the underlying proceedings when the State argued against the provision of additional compensatory education. This line of reasoning fails to account for the distorting force of litigation. While the cited statements (e.g., a letter dated February 10, 1996, from the State's counsel to the appellant's counsel) clearly reflect some recalcitrance on the State's part vis-a-vis additional compensatory education, the proper vector point for a catalyst analysis must be the defendant's position on the claim for relief prior to the onset of litigation--not jousting points taken in the heat of battle. Positions adopted by parties during the course of adversarial proceedings cannot be taken at face value because they tend to be artificially inflated. 23 Viewing matters in this light, the district court found that the State's reticence was no more than an understandable litigatory posture, taken in response to what the court characterized as a patently unreasonable demand on Adams' part. In the court's estimation, it was Adams' unflagging insistence on full implementation of his IEP notwithstanding his placement in the SHU that impeded a satisfactory resolution of the matter and required the parties to go head to head. The record supports this assessment. It seems plain, as the district court noted, that the genesis of the dispute concerned whether Adams' IEP requirements had to yield to countervailing security concerns, and that this issue became the focal point of the adversary proceeding. The district court's resulting inference--that, but for this controversy, a settlement which included additional compensatory education probably could have been reached without resort to litigation--seems eminently reasonable. This circumstance defeats the appellant's claim. See Kathleen H., 154 F.3d at 14 (explaining that the fee-seeker must show that the school district would not have included the alleged benefit in the new IEP but for the litigation); Payne v. Board of Educ., 88 F.3d 392, 400 (6th Cir.1996) (similar). 24 In all events, there is a lacuna in the appellant's proof. A party who seeks fees under a catalyst theory must show that the relief ultimately obtained was sought (or at least easily inferable from what was sought) and refused (expressly or by fair implication) prior to the commencement of a contested hearing. See Johnson v. Bismarck Public Sch. Dist., 949 F.2d 1000, 1003 (8th Cir.1991) (finding causal relationship lacking between the filing of a complaint and additional compensatory education when the plaintiff had failed to pursue this relief prior to filing a due process complaint); cf. Kathleen H., 154 F.3d at 15 (rejecting the plaintiffs' characterization of their overall goal and relying in part on the absence of any evidence that the school district would have failed to provide the services ultimately awarded but for the administrative hearing). Adams offered no such proof. 25 The only evidence adduced here anent the State's pre-litigation posture bears on the issue of whether the legal obligations created by the initial IEP sufficed to override the State's penological policies. This is consistent with the appellant's concession that the State's unwillingness to accede to his demand for full implementation of the IEP's provisions while he was housed in the SHU constituted the motivating factor prompting his petition for a due process hearing. In short, the possibility of affording Adams additional compensatory education to offset the forced deprivation of services occasioned by his placement in the SHU was not addressed prior to the institution of adversarial proceedings. Given the paucity of other proof, this omission dooms the plaintiff's claim. 26 In a last-ditch effort to fill this void, Adams suggests that his abortive attempts to reach a negotiated resolution prior to initiating a due process hearing demonstrate that litigation was his only viable avenue for relief. This suggestion obscures the question of what terms he attempted to negotiate. A party who asks for the moon and the stars, and then sues and loses, cannot expect to receive fees when he thereafter settles for the same lesser constellation that his target likely would have been willing, all along, to provide. So it is here: Adams never made a demand for additional compensatory education as a solution to the SHU problem prior to his due process hearing. To the contrary, he demanded only a deviation from prison regulations in order fully to accommodate the IEP already in place. In the district court's words, [s]imply because Adams subsequently negotiated a revised IEP with which he is now satisfied does not entitle him to recover the substantial sums which were expended in what was a meritless effort to force the State to subordinate its penological interests to his IEP as written, notwithstanding obvious conflicts with the prison's legitimate security and operational goals. 27 To sum up, Adams bore the burden of demonstrating that he would not have received additional compensatory education but for the prosecution of his due process request. To do that, he needed to produce some convincing indication of the State's unreadiness to provide compensatory education. The district court found that Adams failed to make the requisite showing. The sticking point, according to the court, was the appellant's obdurate insistence on an acknowledgment that his IEP trumped the security concerns embedded in the State's correctional policy, so that, even if he remained in the SHU, he would be allowed to attend classes as called for by his IEP. But for this insistence, the court reasoned, the State, if asked to furnish compensatory education for time spent in the SHU, likely would have acquiesced. These findings are reasoned and comport with a plausible rendition of the evidence. Thus, the lower court did not abuse its discretion in determining that Adams failed to establish the necessary causal connection between litigation and relief. 7 28 We need go no further. The prevailing party requirement is an incentive mechanism designed to encourage prompt resolution of meritorious claims and to discourage unnecessary litigation. This policy rationale, evidenced in the Court's treatment of marginal victories, see, Farrar, 506 U.S. at 115, 113 S.Ct. 566, and unrelated claims, see, Hensley, 461 U.S. at 435, 103 S.Ct. 1933, is served by declining to award fees when litigation yields only relief that in all probability was attainable without the time and expense of adversarial proceedings. 29 Affirmed.