Opinion ID: 393164
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the limits on our holding

Text: 15 The union and amici curiae advance two principal arguments for an award of market-value fees in this instance. To do otherwise, the union suggests, will bring us inevitably into conflict with our recent holding in Copeland. 47 Amici offer an even more apocalyptic scenario: our decision, they contend, will destroy the public interest bar by squeezing out of existence those legal aid organizations that depend on court-awarded attorney's fees for part of their funding. 48 16 Certainly, if true, these would be powerful objections. But onto every parade of horribles some dispersing rain must fall, and we are not persuaded that our decision will have such baleful effects. On the contrary, these criticisms reveal a profound misunderstanding of the principles underlying our original opinion, and as well a failure to appreciate the limited nature of our holding.
17 Amici point out that a number of courts have approved market-value attorney's fee allowances directly to legal aid offices and public interest organizations. We are aware that at least nine circuits have vindicated such awards. 49 Those decisions, however, bear no relevance to the instant case. The Code of Professional Responsibility permits a lawyer to divide fees with or distribute them to other members of his law firm or law office, 50 and we see no reason why this authorization should not extend to public as well as private legal practitioners. 51 The same principle leaves a salaried attorney at liberty to surrender his fees to a public interest organization dedicated entirely to litigative activities. 52 18 These results, we think, are firmly rooted in sound policy. As the Third Circuit has noted, 19 (t)he award of fees to legal aid offices and other groups furnishing pro bono publico representation promotes the enforcement of the underlying statutes. ... Legal services organizations often must ration their limited financial and manpower resources. Allowing them to recover fees enhances their capabilities to assist in the enforcement of congressionally favored individual rights. 53 20 Other courts across the country are in accord. 54 We ourselves have observed that full-fee allowances to public interest law firms may be necessary to effectuate the private attorney's general concept implicit in much of Congress' antidiscrimination legislation. 55 Indeed, Congress itself has sanctioned such awards, at least in the civil rights area, for, as the Supreme Court recently observed, Congress (has) endorsed ... decisions allowing fees to public interest groups when it was considering, and passed, the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act of 1976 56 ...which is legislation similar in purpose and design to Title VII's fee provision. 57 The important consideration is that in these instances the fees are plowed back into the litigative programs that made their recovery possible in the first place. 21 Here, in contrast, there is no hint whatsoever that the sought-after fees would be similarly devoted. So far as we know, they would go toward enrichment of the union's coffers and support of its diverse operations. The amount over and above the union's actual cost, we reemphasize, would be a profit on the legal services generating the fees. The ethical exception for fee-splitting within a law office 58 obviously is not applicable, and the policies endorsed by Congress and the courts 59 are not implicated. As we have noted, full-fee awards are appropriate when the monies are to become the attorneys' own; 60 perhaps, too, such allowances would withstand criticism when the monies are directed into a fund for maintenance of a legal services program. 61 But the first of these situations is certainly not the one before us, nor from aught that appears is the second. 22
23 In Copeland, we held that attorney's fee awards in Title VII litigation were to be computed on the basis of the market value of the services rendered the client. 62 While the awardees there were attorneys associated with a private for-profit law firm, we made clear that our holding applied equally to lawyers employed in public interest law offices. 63 This, the union argues, is at war with our conclusion today. 24 The answer, once again, is that the instant case is simply not Copeland reincarnated. The distinguishing wrinkle here is that above-cost fees are requested by a lay organization, a circumstance interposing grave ethical difficulties not arising in Copeland, where market-value fees were sought for the attorneys themselves. There thus was no occasion in Copeland for operation of the well-entrenched ethical principles blocking the union's way in the case at bar. 64 With no overriding facet of law or policy evident, we think our decision should indulge these principles their accustomed sway. 25 We do not imply, of course, that Congress could not assign the considerations at stake values different from those ascribed by the legal profession. It suffices merely to observe that for cases like the one before us, Congress has not done so. It is noteworthy that the Copeland fee award was for services rendered in an employment discrimination action, and that some of our most telling arguments for a market-value allowance the private enforcement scheme of Title VII 65 and congressional affirmation of fee grants to public interest law firms 66 were grounded in a perceived need for widespread citizen-litigation to translate a broad governmental goal into reality. 67 The instant suit, by contrast, involves the Privacy Act, which lacks any comparable background, and the attorney's fee provision of which 68 has the comparatively modest function of removing disincentives to the prosecution of individual actions. 69 26 Our holding, then, is very narrow. We deem it crucial that market-value attorney's fees are sought here, not by a private law firm or its public counterpart, but by a lay organization, to enable it to turn a profit on what distinctly was lawyers' work. We decide no more than that an above-cost allowance in these circumstances would be improper, and that the organization must be limited to recovery of the expense to which it was put in supplying the legal services in question. We remand the case to the District Court for computation and award of the amount thus due the union. 70 27 So ordered. 28