Opinion ID: 199075
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The PLRA Fee Cap.

Text: 9 In the American civil justice system, the spoils that belong to the victor ordinarily do not include payment of attorneys' fees. See Alyeska Pipeline Serv. Co. v. Wilderness Soc'y, 421 U.S. 240, 247 (1975). Except when a statute or an enforceable contractual provision dictates otherwise, litigants generally pay their own way. See id. at 257. Congress has the power, however, to revise this schematic, and if it elects to do so, it may delineate both the circumstances under which attorneys' fees are to be shifted and the extent of the courts' discretion in that respect. See id. at 262. Furthermore, this power may be exercised selectively, that is to say, Congress may pick and choose among its statutes and . . . allow attorneys' fees under some, but not others. Id. at 263. 10 In perhaps the most striking use of this power to date - the Fees Act, adopted in 1976 - Congress gave the courts discretion to award reasonable attorneys' fees to prevailing civil rights litigants. See 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b) (Supp. II 1996). Congress later enacted other statutes that hewed roughly to this prototype. See, e.g., City of Burlington v. Dague, 505 U.S. 557, 562 (1992) (noting that many federal statutes that shift attorneys' fees share similar language); Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council for Clean Air, 478 U.S. 546, 562 (1986) (noting that more than 100 federal statutes provide for attorneys' fees). In enacting the PLRA, Congress deviated from this pattern, choosing to place some explicit limitations on the fees that courts can award to prisoners' lawyers in civil cases: 11 (1) In any action brought by a prisoner who is confined to any jail, prison, or other correctional facility, in which attorney's fees are authorized under section 1988 of this title, such fees shall not be awarded, except to the extent that-- 12 (A) the fee was directly and reasonably incurred in proving an actual violation of the plaintiff's rights protected by a statute pursuant to which a fee may be awarded under section 1988 of this title; and 13 (B)(i) the amount of the fee is proportionately related to the court ordered relief for the violation; or (ii) the fee was directly and reasonably incurred in enforcing the relief ordered for the violation. 14 (2) Whenever a monetary judgment is awarded in an action described in paragraph (1), a portion of the judgment (not to exceed 25 percent) shall be applied to satisfy the amount of attorney's fees awarded against the defendant. If the award of attorney's fees is not greater than 150 percent of the judgment, the excess shall be paid by the defendant. 15 (3) No award of attorney's fees in an action described in paragraph (1) shall be based on an hourly rate greater than 150 percent of the hourly rate established under 3006A of title 18, for payment of court-appointed counsel. 16 (4) Nothing in this subsection shall prohibit a prisoner from entering into an agreement to pay an attorney's fee in an amount greater than the amount authorized under this subsection, if the fee is paid by the individual rather than by the defendant pursuant to section 1988 of this title. 17 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(d) (footnotes omitted). 18 The particular limitation around which this appeal revolves relates to monetary judgments. When a prisoner-plaintiff garners a monetary judgment, section 1997e(d)(2) imposes a ceiling on the defendants' liability for attorneys' fees equal to 150% of the amount of that judgment. This appeal raises the question of whether a nominal damage award counts as a monetary judgment within the purview of section 1997e(d)(2). 19 We begin, as we must, with the language of the statute. See Bonilla v. Muebles J.J. Alvarez, Inc., 194 F.3d 275, 277 (1st Cir. 1999). We assume that the words that Congress chose to implement its wishes, if not specifically defined, carry their ordinary meaning and accurately express Congress's intent. See Rouse, 129 F.3d at 653-54. If the gist of the statute is obvious and the text, given its plain meaning, produces a plausible scenario, it is unnecessary - and improper - to look for other signposts . . . . United States v. Charles George Trucking Co., 823 F.2d 685, 688 (1st Cir. 1987). 20 While section 1997e(d)(2) is awkwardly phrased, its import and its essence are transparently clear: [w]henever a monetary judgment is awarded in an action covered by the PLRA and the prevailing party seeks attorneys' fees, the defendant shall pay such fees up to a maximum of 150% of the judgment amount, and no more. 3 Since an award of $1.00 is just as much a monetary judgment as an award of $1,000,000, the plain language of the statute makes the fee cap applicable to such an award. This reasoning becomes especially compelling when one reflects that, although nominal damage awards long have been commonplace in civil rights cases, see, e.g., Farrar v. Hobby, 506 U.S. 103, 107 (1992); Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247, 266 (1978); O'Connor v. Huard, 117 F.3d 12, 14 (1st Cir. 1997); Maldonado Santiago v. Velazquez Garcia, 821 F.2d 822, 829 (1st Cir. 1987), section 1997e(d)(2) neither makes any express exception for nominal damage awards nor excludes from its sweep judgments of less than X dollars. 21 In a Briarean effort to blunt the force of this logic, Boivin argues that Congress could not have intended so eccentric a result. Capping attorneys' fees at $1.50 for a prevailing plaintiff who has won a nominal damage award, he tells us, serves to discourage counsel from accepting meritorious prisoners' rights cases and thereby frustrates prison reform litigation. We agree with Boivin that the plain-meaning doctrine is not a categorical imperative, and that the unambiguous text of a statute may yield if its application tends to produce absurd results. See United States v. Ron Pair Enters., Inc., 489 U.S. 235, 242 (1989); see also Greenwood Trust Co. v. Massachusetts, 971 F.2d 818, 825 (1st Cir. 1992) ([A] court must always hesitate to construe words in a statute according to their apparent meaning if to do so would defeat Congress's discovered intendment.). This exception, however, is to be employed cautiously, see Rouse, 129 F.3d at 655, and it does not apply at all in this case. 22 Congress enacted the PLRA out of a concern that prisoner litigation, much of it frivolous, was wasting taxpayer money and clogging the courts. See, e.g., 142 Cong. Rec. S10576 (daily ed. Sept. 16, 1996) (statement of Sen. Abraham); 141 Cong. Rec. S7526 (daily ed. May 25, 1995) (statement of Sen. Kyl). Congress could well have reasoned that applying the fee cap to nominal damage awards would encourage both prisoners and members of the bar to weigh the likely value of claims before proceeding to court, thus reducing the overall number of prisoner suits and easing the perceived burden of prisoner litigation on the justice system. One can argue with the policy behind such a legislative choice, but one hardly can classify the end result of that policy - measured in the large, and not by the occasional anomalous outcome - as absurd or chimerical. 23 Indeed, exempting nominal damage awards from the cap on attorneys' fees, as Boivin urges, itself would run an equally great (or greater) risk of bringing about bizarre results. Under such a regime, a prisoner who had won a judgment of $1,000 in compensation for a physical injury suffered in the course of a constitutional violation could be awarded a maximum of $1,500 in attorneys' fees, but a prisoner subjected to the same violation who sustained no physical injury and was awarded $1.00 in nominal damages would face no such limitation. There is no hint in the record that Congress wished to foster these kinds of inequities. We hold, therefore, that Congress, in enacting section 1997e(d)(2), meant what it said. The statutory cap on attorneys' fees applies to all monetary judgments, including nominal damage awards. 4 24