Opinion ID: 157110
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Defendants' failure to challenge portion of requested fee.

Text: 42 The court's award dropped the fee request from the $186,008.75 presented by the plaintiffs, and the $140,316.25 left uncontested by the defendants, to $105,720.89. The end result was a fee award that was nearly 25 percent below the unrebutted amount of the plaintiffs' fee request (and 43 percent below the original plaintiffs' request). 43 Of course, there is no question that a district court may rely on its general experience as well as its closer familiarity with a case to evaluate the parties' arguments on a fees issue. See Bee v. Greaves, 910 F.2d 686, 689 (10th Cir.1990). In this respect, a district court may well decide to go below the amount of a fee request put in controversy by the parties--in this sense, the court's discretion is not absolutely constrained by the amount of a fee request put in controversy by the parties. But cf. Cunningham v. City of McKeesport, 753 F.2d 262, 267 (3d Cir.1985) (holding that under the Third Circuit's approach, a district court has no reason to disregard uncontested affidavits filed by the fee applicant when the defendant chose not to put those amounts in controversy), vacated 478 U.S. 1015, 106 S.Ct. 3324, 92 L.Ed.2d 731 (1986), reinstated after remand, 807 F.2d 49 (3d Cir.1986). However, the fact that the district court here chose to depart significantly from the unchallenged portion of the plaintiffs' fee request, and did so only by applying a blanket reduction ratio, is a factor to consider in deciding whether the district court abused its discretion in the magnitude of the cuts ordered.