Opinion ID: 790169
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Community in Which the Action or Proceeding Arose

Text: 65 The DOE complains that the district judges wrongly looked to the legal community of the Southern District of New York, where they sit, rather than to the community of all practitioners appearing before the DOE in IDEA administrative actions, to measure the level of legal fees to be awarded to the Parents' counsel. 15 66 The community to which the IDEA's fee calculation provision refers is typically measured by the geographic area in which the action was commenced and litigated. Arbor Hill Concerned Citizens Neighborhood Ass'n v. County of Albany, 369 F.3d 91, 94 (2d Cir.2004) (per curiam) (analyzing similar provision in Voting Rights Act of 1965). Where the legal dispute has been pursued through an action in federal court, [n]ormally a district court, awarding attorney's fees under [a fee-shifting statute], will consider the prevailing rates in the district in which the court sits. Polk v. N.Y. State Dep't of Corr. Servs., 722 F.2d 23, 25 (2d Cir.1983) (analyzing award of attorney's fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 in action brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983); accord Cruz v. Local Union No. 3 of Int'l Bhd. of Elec. Workers, 34 F.3d 1148, 1159 (2d Cir.1994). 67 The disputes in the cases before us were pursued through IDEA administrative proceedings, not the district court. The DOE exercises jurisdiction over public schooling in the five boroughs of the City of New York, three of which lie within the jurisdiction of one United States District Court and two of which are in another. The students involved in these proceedings attended schools in Bronx and New York Counties, both in the Southern District of New York; administrative hearings were held there as well as in Kings County, which is in the Eastern District. The Parents' lawyers have their offices in New York County, in the Southern District. Our case law does not provide us with a litmus test for determining, in these circumstances, the community in which the proceedings for which the Parents were awarded legal fees arose. See, e.g., I.B., 336 F.3d at 81 (considering issue of whether fees under IDEA should reflect rates for general litigation or for representations in administrative hearings only, without addressing choice of community); G.M., 173 F.3d at 84 (remanding for determination of fees under IDEA without discussing the community the district court should consider in determining fees). 68 The Parents urge us to affirm the district court's fee awards because the awards comply with the typical rule. They suggest that the cases arose entirely or principally in the Southern District of New York and contend that the district court therefore properly treated the rates prevailing in the Southern District as the fee structure against which the attorneys' fees here should be measured. The DOE contends to the contrary that the relevant community must be co-extensive with the group of lawyers who bring IDEA actions against the DOE: in other words, that the district court must refer to rates across the five boroughs of the City of New York in determining a reasonable rate for representation in IDEA hearings. 69 The text of section 1415(i)(3)(C) does not appear to compel either conclusion. The requirement that the relevant community be that in which the action or proceeding arose does not tell us whether a proceeding arises where it is held (in this case, the Southern and Eastern Districts) or where the events that gave rise to the hearings occurred (here, the Southern District). Nor can we conclude from the fact that the proceedings undeniably arose in the City of New York as a whole that they cannot also be said to have arisen in the Southern District of New York or that the community of lawyers throughout the City of New York, i.e., those lawyers appearing before the DOE, is necessarily the only group whose fees provide the yardstick by which to measure the fee award. 70 The DOE expresses a concern that, under what it sees as the district court's district-specific approach, the same lawyer may be paid at different hourly rates for services rendered in similar proceedings against the same defendant depending upon the happenstance of where in New York City, and therefore in which federal district, the action or proceeding [against the DOE] arose. But such distinctions are inherent in any approach that distinguishes between the level of legal payments in different districts when setting the rate at which legal fees are to be awarded: The same lawyer may be paid at different rates with respect to otherwise identical legal services provided in cases heard in the Southern District of New York (New York County (Manhattan), Bronx County, and points north) from those at which he or she is paid with respect to legal services provided in cases heard in the Eastern District of New York (Richmond County (Staten Island), Kings County (Brooklyn), Queens County, and points east). So long as the law provides for or permits fee awards based on geographic markets for services, a lawyer may be paid at different rates for otherwise indistinguishable services. As the District of Columbia Circuit observed, this approach provides 71 a neutral rule which will not work to any clear advantage for either those seeking attorneys' fees or those paying them. High-priced attorneys coming into a jurisdiction in which market rates are lower will have to accept those lower rates for litigation performed there. Similarly, some attorneys may receive fees based on rates higher than they normally command if those higher rates are the norm for the jurisdiction in which the suit was litigated. 72 Donnell v. United States, 682 F.2d 240, 251-52 (D.C.Cir.1982), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1204, 103 S.Ct. 1190, 75 L.Ed.2d 436 (1983). 16 73 We acknowledge, on the other side of the ledger, that there is good reason for a district court not to be wed to the rates in its own community. If they are lower than those in another district, skilled lawyers from such other district will be dissuaded from taking meritorious cases in the district with lower rates. If lawyers are paid for their participation in IDEA proceedings that clearly arise in Queens at a rate considerably lower than what they are paid for representation in proceedings that clearly arise in Manhattan, experienced, Manhattan-based lawyers like Mr. Hampden, Mr. Silverblatt, and Mr. Mayerson may decide to devote their time and expertise to IDEA cases that arise in Manhattan rather than those cases in which parents are equally needful of their services, but that arise in Queens. 17 74 But we need not arrive at a crisp rule that a district court must employ to make this determination. We have held in somewhat comparable circumstances that the district court has discretion—to be sure, discretion that may not be abused— to determine the relevant community for calculating attorneys' fees where the case was not commenced and litigated in a single federal district. See Polk v. N.Y. State Dep't of Corr. Servs., 722 F.2d 23, 24 (2d Cir.1983) (concluding, where the case was justifiably commenced in the Southern District but later transferred to the Northern District for improper venue, that the district court had discretion to award a fee based on either the Southern District or Northern District). 75 Similarly here, there is more than one community that the district court might reasonably have considered in determining fees. But the contacts between the administrative proceedings and the Southern District, which is the place where the clients reside, where the facts giving rise to their successful claims occurred, and where the lawyers who represented them hang their shingles, appear clearly to predominate. By comparison, the fact that the DOE held hearings on the other side of an intra-city bridge provides minimal support for treating the place where the proceedings were held as that in which they arose on the facts of these cases. Although none of this means that the district court was required to reach the result that it did, it does confirm that the court did not abuse its discretion in treating the Southern District as the community in which the ... proceeding arose, and therefore in relying primarily on the level of legal fees charged by comparable lawyers in comparable circumstances in the Southern District of New York in setting legal fees for the plaintiffs under the IDEA.