Court Opinion

ID: 9458707
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:59:58.23568+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:52.207338
License: Public Domain

HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge:
An award of attorneys’ fees in this civil rights case is challenged as being too low. While not overly generous, we conclude that it was within the range of the District Court’s discretion.
This action was begun by several black women alleging discrimination in employment practices in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The District Judge found such discrimination had been practiced, and he issued an appropriate injunction, but he denied an award of back pay and counsel fees. Generally we affirmed, but we held that counsel fees should have been awarded, and we remanded for that purpose. Lea v. Cone Mills Corporation, 4 Cir., 438 F.2d 86.
On remand the District Court awarded fees of $10,000, the adequacy of which is now questioned.
Our review is hampered by the absence of detailed findings, a circumstance which the plaintiffs contend requires reversal under Rule 52(a), F.R. C.P. Rule 52(a) does require findings of fact and conclusions of law in actions tried without a jury, but, in its last sentence, it exempts “decisions of motions under Rules 12 or 56 or any other motion except as provided in Rule 41(b).” The fee award was sought by motion under the provisions of § 706 (k) of Title VII.1 It is one of the “other motions” exempted from the requirements of Rule 52(a), and the absence of findings does not require reversal. The fact that no findings were requested of the District Court emphasizes our conclusion.
We might have considered a discretionary remand for detailed findings but for the untimely death of Judge Stanley. We cannot call upon him to record his thought processes, and another District Judge is in no better position than we to reconstruct them.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers are successful and experienced in handling civil rights eases in the federal courts. They say that, collectively, they expended 515 hours in handling the case. There were twelve of them, however, some in New *279York and some in Charlotte. The fact that there were so many lawyers suggests the possibility of substantial duplication of effort. Duplication is strongly indicated by such things as the expenditure of 40 hours in a “preliminary analysis” of defendant’s answers to interrogatories, 60 hours in the preparation of a reply brief and three hours of lawyers’ time in the preparation of a bill of costs.
Judge Stanley, of course, had the advantage of close observation of their work product. An experienced trial judge, such as he, knows how to appraise the time and effort reasonably and prudently spent by lawyers in the preparation and presentation of their cases; he knows how to appraise the value of their services. Duplication of effort which we may only suspect could have been very apparent to him. Indeed we know that he thought the computation of the hours unreasonably high, for after disclaiming any thought of misrepresentation on the part of anyone, as do we, he remarked from the Bench, “some of these items I just think wouldn’t take that long.”
 “[T]he allowance of attorneys’ fees” as Judge Murrah has said, “is within the judicial discretion of the trial judge, who has close and intimate knowledge of the efforts expended and the value of the services rendered. And an appellate court is not warranted in overturning the trial court’s judgment unless under all of the facts and circumstances it is clearly wrong.” United States v. Anglin & Stevenson, 10 Cir., 145 F.2d 622, 630, cert. denied 324 U.S. 844, 65 S.Ct. 678, 89 L.Ed. 1405. See also, Cappel v. Adams, 5 Cir., 434 F.2d 1278, 1280.
The plaintiffs find some comfort in Courtesy Chevrolet, Inc. v. Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders’ and Exhibitors’ Ass’n, 9 Cir., 393 F.2d 75. That was a not uncomplicated antitrust ease in which the plaintiff’s attorneys had expended 2,289 hours, four times the number of hours claimed here. The Court of Appeals directed that an award of attorneys’ fees be increased from $5,-000 to $10,000. Appellate intervention in fixing the amount of fee awards was unusual, but if $10,000 was within the bounds of reasonableness there, it hardly can be said to be without it here.
Considering the number of lawyers involved, the indications of duplication of effort, Judge Stanley’s expression of his view that some of the work would reasonably require less time than actually spent and his own observation of the work product and his capacity to evaluate it, we cannot conclude that a fee of $10,000 was so unreasonably low as to be beyond the range of his discretion.
Affirmed.

. 42 U.S.C.A. § 2000e-5 (k).