Court Opinion

ID: 9499326
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:44:58.857515+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:25.824654
License: Public Domain

GRABER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in part and dissent in part.
I agree that the district court did not abuse its discretion in disallowing 21.5 hours. To that extent, I concur.1
But I dissent from the majority’s conclusion that the district court sufficiently explained its determination of the hourly rate, and from its conclusion that there was no evidence of any other applicable rate. Title 42 U.S.C. § 1988 refers only to “reasonable” fees. Reasonableness means the prevailing market rate in the relevant community. Blum v. Stenson, 465 U.S. 886, 895, 104 S.Ct. 1541, 79 L.Ed.2d 891 (1984). However, the Supreme Court has recognized that the market rate varies greatly depending on skill, experience, and reputation; where the requested rate is in line with the rates for similar services by comparably skilled, experienced, and reputable attorneys, it “is normally deemed to be reasonable.” Id. at 895, 104 S.Ct. 1541 n. 11.
The district court, in two sentences, made this conclusory comment as to how it arrived at the hourly rate of $150 per hour: in March 2003 “courts” in the district had awarded Plaintiffs counsel that amount in some other unnamed case or cases, and this rate is “reasonable given the prevailing rates in Montana.” But *894Plaintiffs counsel had submitted six affidavits (including his own) to support the requested $195 per hour — which was counsel’s actual billing rate — for civil rights litigation in Montana at the relevant time. For example, a former HUD official who worked with Mr. Kelly stated that, “based on my awareness of rates charged and services rendered by attorneys with comparable skill, experience and ability within the states covered by the HUD Rocky Mountain region, the current rate charged by Mr. Kelly is reasonable and appropriate and would be considered low in many areas given his level of expertise.” Other affidavits explain that Mr. Kelly’s rate is reasonable because he is more knowledgeable and efficient than other lawyers. The district court did not address any of this evidence; neither did the court explain why “Montana” in general is the relevant community, rather than the community of civil rights lawyers, or Mountain States lawyers, or particularly efficient and knowledgeable lawyers.
In Jordan v. Multnomah County, 815 F.2d 1258, 1263 (9th Cir.1987), we held that the district judge abused his discretion because he “made no finding on the sufficiency of the evidence” and “remain[ed] silent as to how ... he reached the ‘reasonableness’ conclusion.” More recently, in Sorenson v. Mink, 239 F.3d 1140, 1149 (9th Cir.2001), we reversed and remanded a fee decision because “[w]e cannot determine from the district court’s order whether it accepted Plaintiffs’ evidence concerning the market rate or, if not, why not.” Here, although we can see that the district court did not accept Plaintiffs evidence concerning the market rate, we cannot determine “why not” in a meaningful way because of the court’s failure to address Plaintiffs evidence. The court did not “provide a clear indication of how it exercised its discretion.” McGrath v. County of Nev., 67 F.3d 248, 253 (9th Cir.1995).
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent in part. In my view, the fee question should be remanded to the district court for further findings, as our precedent dictates.

. I concur because the district court permissibly relied on the fact that the hours in dispute were spent on a premature, and thus unnecessary, document. But the filing was not in the wrong venue, which was the district court's second reason.