Opinion ID: 759223
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Fees for Gierlinger I

Text: 126 The district court denied Gierlinger's request for fees for 63.3 hours in connection with Gierlinger I, the appeal following the first trial, on the ground that she was not the prevailing party as to that appeal. We have several difficulties with this denial. 127 Parenthetically, we note that Gierlinger was not entirely unsuccessful in Gierlinger I, for Gleason had urged this Court in part to grant him judgment as a matter of law. We rejected that request, see Gierlinger I, 15 F.3d at 34 n. 1, and thus, Gierlinger prevailed in part on that appeal. 128 More importantly, a § 1983 plaintiff's eligibility for an award of fees under § 1988 does not depend on her success at interim stages of the litigation, but rather depends on the ultimate outcome of the litigation. See, e.g., Hanrahan v. Hampton, 446 U.S. 754, 758-59, 100 S.Ct. 1987, 64 L.Ed.2d 670 (1980) (per curiam) (reversing award of attorneys' fees to plaintiffs for success on appeal from a directed verdict against them, stating that if plaintiffs lost at their new trial it could not seriously be contended that [they] had prevailed). A plaintiff is a prevailing party in the litigation within the meaning of § 1988 if she has received actual relief on the merits of h[er] claim, Farrar v. Hobby, 506 U.S. 103, 111, 113 S.Ct. 566, 121 L.Ed.2d 494 (1992), and she should not necessarily be denied fees for hours expended on interim stages of the case in which a ruling was made in favor of the party against whom she ultimately prevailed. Cf. Reed v. A.W. Lawrence & Co., 95 F.3d 1170, 1183 (2d Cir.1996) (a prevailing party may even receive a fee award for time spent on an interlocking claim that was not ultimately successful). Since Gierlinger is the prevailing party in the litigation and the Gierlinger I appeal turned out to be only an intermediate stage, the proper inquiry is not whether Gierlinger's efforts on the appeal itself were successful, but rather whether, in light of the circumstances of the litigation as a whole, those efforts were reasonable. 129 The record reveals that Gierlinger's efforts to defend the first judgment were reasonable and that, indeed, it would be inequitable to deny her fees with respect to Gierlinger I because the problems that led to the partial reversal on that appeal were not attributable to Gierlinger. The errors at the first trial were (a) that the district court did not instruct the jury expressly that it could not find Gleason liable on the § 1983 claim on the basis of a respondeat superior theory, and (b) that the jury was asked to find, as to each defendant, simply whether there is liability, and was not asked to specify the theory on which it found any defendant liable. This Court concluded that a new trial of the claims against Gleason was required because it was 130 not possible to determine from the [jury] instructions whether the jury found Gleason liable on the theory of respondeat superior, which is not available on a § 1983 claim, or liable for his own performance as a commanding officer. 131 Gierlinger I, 15 F.3d at 34. We went on to note that the failure to give the necessary instructions with respect to respondeat superior liability would not necessarily have required a reversal if the special verdict form had simply required the jury to specify the basis for any finding of liability:[s]ince separate theories of liability with different standards of individual involvement were presented to [the] jury, it would have been better practice and aided appellate review had the trial court made use of special interrogatories on the liability issues. 132 Id. 133 If Gierlinger had proposed erroneous jury instructions, or if she had opposed correct instructions or an appropriate special verdict form, there would be a strong basis for denying her fees for some, if not all, of the hours her attorney expended on Gierlinger I. But the record shows just the opposite. In the charging conference at the first trial, when Gleason's attorney stated that under § 1983, no one is responsible simply by means of being in charge because [t]here's no respondeat superior liability (Transcript of First Trial, May 20, 1992, vol. 10, at 12), Gierlinger's attorney agreed (id. at 13). And when the court asked whether Gierlinger objected to the addition of a specific instruction that there could be no liability on a respondeat superior theory, her attorney answered in the negative: 134 THE COURT: ... [N]o hurt if the jury has that pointed out to them that if Gleason, for example, can't be held liable because of something [one of Gleason's subordinate officers] did or something like that? 135 . . . . . 136 MR. POTTLE: No, I have no problem with that because I think that's probably the basic charge, that it's directed at the individual. 137 THE COURT: Yeah, that's an add-on part of [sic ] you have no objection? 138 MR. POTTLE: No. 139 (Id. at 13.) 140 Further, Pottle pointed out that the court's proposed special verdict form was not particularized as to the possible doctrinal bases for liability and stated that it's possible that the[ jury] could have one verdict on ... one cause of action ... and another verdict on another cause of action. (Id. at 121-22.) The district court, however, rejected Gierlinger's suggestion that it amend the verdict form. (Id.) Had the court accepted her suggestion, it seems likely that the outcome in Gierlinger I would have been different, and the litigation would have ended in Gierlinger's favor at that point. 141 In sum, the fact that Gierlinger did not entirely succeed in the interim stage represented by Gierlinger I is not material because she is the prevailing party in the litigation. The fact that at the first trial the court did not give a sufficiently specific instruction on the unavailability of respondeat superior liability was not the fault of Gierlinger, whose attorney expressly stated that he had no objection to such an instruction. And the fact that the jury's verdict did not reveal the doctrinal basis for its finding of liability on the part of Gleason was not the fault of Gierlinger, whose suggestion for a sufficiently particularized verdict form had been rejected by the court. Given the goal of § 1988 to compensate a plaintiff for what it has reasonably cost to obtain vindication of her meritorious civil rights claim, we conclude that it was an abuse of discretion to deny Gierlinger attorneys' fees with respect to services performed in connection with Gierlinger I. We recognize that the principal error that led to that reversal was also not the fault of Gleason, who proposed a specific charge on respondeat superior liability. But as between the prevailing party and the person the jury has found to be the wrongdoer, it is the latter who should properly bear the expenses reasonably incurred by the prevailing party. We leave it to the district court on remand to determine, in the first instance, how many of the hours claimed by Gierlinger for services in connection with Gierlinger I were reasonably expended. 142 Gierlinger also contends that the district court should have granted her request for an award of costs in connection with the appeal in Gierlinger I. We disagree. After we issued our decision in favor of Gleason, he filed in this Court his bill of costs in the amount of $2,938.48, and Gierlinger did not file any opposition. Nor did she move either to deny costs or to delay any determination of whether the appellate costs should be taxed against her, in order to hinge that determination on the outcome of the litigation. Accordingly, Gierlinger was taxed costs in the above amount, and that award was, pursuant to Fed. R.App. P. 39(d), included in this Court's mandate. The district court had no discretion to set aside this Court's award of costs to Gleason in connection with Gierlinger I.