Court Opinion

ID: 9537675
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:21:17.35922+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:56:53.556573
License: Public Domain

MATTHEWS, Justice,
dissenting in part.
Singh settled his civil rights/defamation case for $17,501. The trial court awarded him an additional $17,556 in attorney’s fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. Today’s opinion holds in part that the trial court abused its discretion as a matter of law and should have awarded attorney’s fees of $31,920 for work leading up to the settlement. I do not join in this conclusion for the reasons that follow.
Because it is not economically reasonable to spend $2.00 to make $1.00, the degree, of success in litigation where only money is at issue is easy to measure. Litigation is not successful, even where the recovery may be called “significant,” if the amount spent to obtain a recovery exceeds the amount of the recovery. By this measure this case was not successful. I would suggest that if a claimant’s lawyer were to recommend that a case be settled for $17,000 and then, upon settlement, were to send his client a bill for $31,000, the lawyer would have a very difficult task in explaining to the client — and perhaps the fee arbitration panel of the bar association — why the requested fee was a reasonable one.1 Yet, on essentially these facts, the court today holds that such a fee is reasonable as a matter of law.
Because this is a civil rights case it is possible that the fee mandated by today’s opinion should be awarded. Civil rights cases, including those where only money damages are sought, may have a public value which cannot be measured economically. If this is such a case, attorney’s fees at a higher level than would be regarded as reasonable in commercial litigation may be warranted. Such a determination, however, should be made by the trial court.
Justice Powell addressed the issue of proportionality between the actual recovery and fees in civil rights cases in casting the deciding vote in City of Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561, 106 S.Ct. 2686, 91 L.Ed.2d 466 (1986). In Riverside, the plaintiff sought $245,456.25 for attorney’s fees incurred in recovering $33,350 in damages. Justice Powell wrote that “[i]t probably will be the rare case in which an award of private damages can be said to benefit the public interest to an extent that would justify the disproportionality between damages and fees reflected in this case.” Id. at 586 n. 3, 106 S.Ct. at 2700 n. 3 (Powell, J., concurring in the judgment) (emphasis in original). He voted to uphold the fee award, however, deferring to the trial court’s finding that the plaintiff's suit “served the public interest by vindicating important constitutional rights.” Id. at 583, 106 S.Ct. at 2699.
This establishes a framework for assessing the reasonableness of a fee award in light of the proportionality between the amount recovered and the fees sought. Under this framework, no fee adjustment *1205is necessary if the amount recovered substantially exceeds the fees sought. If, however, the fees sought equal or exceed the amount recovered, the court must consider whether plaintiffs suit “served the public interest” sufficiently to justify a disproportionate fee. If so, the “lodestar” fee may be awarded. If not, the court should adjust the fee accordingly.2
In the present case, the trial court never specifically addressed the possible public interest value of this litigation. For this reason, I believe that this case should be remanded for further consideration of attorney’s fees under Justice Powell’s proportionality analysis.
If the trial court were to determine that this litigation did not have a public interest value which required a fee in excess of the settlement amount, I would not hold that the fee awarded was an abuse of discretion. The trial court found that this case was overlitigated by Singh’s attorney, suggested that he lacked “billing judgment,” and gave credible examples in support of these conclusions.

. See Alaska Bar Rules 34 and 35.

. Several federal circuits follow the Powell proportionality approach. See, e.g., Ustrak v. Fairman, 851 F.2d 983, 989 (7th Cir.1988); Nephew v. City of Aurora, 830 F.2d 1547, 1550-51 (10th Cir.1987), cert. denied, 485 U.S. 976, 108 S.Ct. 1269, 99 L.Ed.2d 481 (1988); Gonzales v. Jillson, 642 F.Supp. 908, 909 (D.Mass.1986) (awarding full fees because “significance of [low] monetary award is outweighed by the important public interests vindicated by the general jury verdict”).