Opinion ID: 618982
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Consumer Price Index

Text: The district court used the CPI to determine Rossiello's reasonable hourly rate by starting with the $350 rate that we approved for Rossiello in 2001, see Batt, 241 F.3d at 895. The court then took judicial notice that the CPI increase since 2001 is less than 30% and remarked that [t]he increase in Mr. Rossiello's claimed hourly rate from $350 to almost $600 runs well in excess of that. The district court cited to two government websites about the CPI but provided no further explanation. Although we have never addressed whether a court may take judicial notice of the CPI, we now hold that the CPI belongs to the category of public records of which a court may take judicial notice. See Pugh v. Tribune Co., 521 F.3d 686, 691 n. 2 (7th Cir.2008) (judicial notice of publicly reported stock prices); Indianapolis Water Co. v. McCart, 89 F.2d 522, 526-27 (7th Cir.1937) (judicial notice of an upward trend in prices); see also Cal. Marine Cleaning, Inc. v. United States, 43 Fed.Cl. 724, 734 (Fed.Cl.1999) (judicial notice of the CPI). The district court's opinion does not identify what years it used for the calculation or what CPI-adjustment it found, leaving us unable to determine exactly what the court found Rossiello's CPI-adjusted hourly rate to be. Attempting to speculate with regard to the district court's approach, we arrive at a CPI increase of 26.2%, which produces a 2011 hourly rate of $441.70 for Rossiello. [9] Thus, reliance on the CPI appears to yield a higher rate than the rate ultimately approved by the district court. If the district court had given plaintiff notice that it intended to rely on the CPI and an opportunity to respond, plaintiff might have argued for the use of different years as guideposts or for the use of a different award as the starting point. The district court's reliance on an hourly rate that we previously approved for Rossiello is logical, but our approval of a rate does not make that rate inherently more reasonable than other rates obtained by Rossiello. Aside from the $350 rate that we approved in Batt in 2001, Rossiello had been awarded rates of $350 and $375 two years earlier. The district court referred to these rates as much more modest but still selected an even lower award as the basis for the CPI adjustment. Since we have stated that a previous attorneys' fee award is useful for establishing a reasonable market rate for similar work whether it is disputed or not, Jeffboat, LLC, 553 F.3d at 491, plaintiff might have persuasively argued for the use of a different award in the CPI calculation. Further, plaintiff might have argued that the court should increase Rossiello's rate by more than the CPI-increase due to the fact that Rossiello's market value increased by more than the amount of inflation as he acquired additional experience and successful outcomes over the past decade. We therefore hold that the district court abused its discretion by relying sua sponte on a CPI-adjusted rate. This approach deprived plaintiff of an opportunity to contest the application of the CPI or to argue for a particular manner of applying it to the present case.