Opinion ID: 3033448
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Benefit to Plaintiff Personally

Text: [5] As a second basis for awarding fees, the district court explained: Furthermore, even though plaintiff no longer faced restriction on the use of her degrees in Oregon even absent the judgment, her career will always be marked by this occurrence. Obtaining a declaration that her rights were violated serves an important purpose for plaintiff. She now has a judgment to point to in support of the trustworthiness of her education and her credentials. The district court’s language suggests that plaintiff obtained a declaratory judgment; however, she did not. It is undisputed that the district court dismissed plaintiff’s claim for declaratory judgment as moot in light of the change in the statute, and nothing in the language of the judgment itself suggests that plaintiff was awarded declaratory relief. Moreover, although plaintiff moved in court “to amend the judgment in order to add the declaratory judgment language from Page Seven of the opinion,” a review of the docket reveals that the district court did not amend the judgment, and its refusal to do so is not before us on appeal. The “declaration” to which the district court refers is the district court’s conclusion in its Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law that plaintiff had proven that her constitutional rights had been violated. That conclusion did no more than support the imposition of the nominal damages award. [6] As noted, to justify an award of attorney’s fees in this case, the district court must identify “some way in which the litigation succeeded, in addition to obtaining a judgment for nominal damage.” Wilcox, 42 F.3d at 555. In other words, the BENTON v. OREGON STUDENT ASSIST. COMM’N 11589 lawsuit must have “achieved other tangible results” besides the nominal damages judgment. Id. Here, a finding that plaintiff’s rights were violated was a prerequisite to the award of nominal damages; in fact, a finding of a constitutional violation will always be present in a civil rights case where nominal damages have been awarded. See Farrar, 506 U.S. at 120 (O’Connor, J., concurring) (“Every nominal damage award has as its basis a finding of liability, but obviously many such victories are Pyrrhic ones.”) (quoting Lawrence v. Hinton, 937 F.2d 603 (4th Cir. 1991). Moreover, every plaintiff who receives a nominal damages judgment will necessary have a “judgment to point to” that shows that the plaintiff was in the right and the defendant in the wrong. Thus, the finding that plaintiff’s rights were violated and the accompanying judgment cannot be the “something more” required for an award of attorney’s fees and costs here. [7] Finally, the judgment is not, as the district court found, evidence that plaintiff can point to “in support of the trustworthiness of her education and her credentials.” Rather, the judgment is merely evidence that the former version of O.R.S. § 348.609 was applied to plaintiff in a biased manner. The evidence that plaintiff can point to regarding the legitimacy of her credentials is the finding by defendant Contreras and the Office of Degree Authorization made pursuant to the revised version of the statute that Bob Jones University meets the standards of academic quality comparable to an accredited institution. However, given that this finding was made well prior to the finding of liability and entry of judgment in this case, this determination regarding the legitimacy of plaintiff’s credentials cannot be considered a “tangible result” of this litigation that would support an attorney’s fee award in this case.