Court Opinion

ID: 9484474
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:54:30.424821+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:50:16.081298
License: Public Domain

STEPHEN F. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority has adopted a troubling solution to the problem of attorneys’ fees in a case of multiple claims, one successful and the other not. First, the court extracts from Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983), a far more rigid rule for handling the problem than Hensley requires. Second, when combined with our decision in George Hyman Const. Co. v. Brooks, 963 F.2d 1532 (D.C.Cir.1992), the disposition here puts district judges in an unnecessary dilemma, where they run serious risks of reversal if they make the wrong call (i.e., one not in accord with the opinion of a reviewing panel) on an issue that should be — by Supreme Court precedent — left to their discretion. By imposing rather synthetic rules on a phase of the fee calculation process that does not lend itself to rules at all, the decision will increase the work of district judges and inspire unnecessary appellate litigation — and yet yield nothing in the way of fairer or more uniform fee awards.
In its reliance on Hensley, the majority seems to catch the notes better than the music. There the district court had refused to divide the attorneys’ hours between winning and losing claims. 461 U.S. at 438, 103 S.Ct. at 1942. In the passages noted by the majority here, the Supreme Court distinguished between eases involving “distinctly different claims for relief that are based on different facts and legal theories”, id., and ones where “the plaintiffs claims for relief will involve a common core of facts or will be based on related legal theories”, id. at 435, 103 S.Ct. at 1940. In the first type, “counsel’s work on one claim will be unrelated to his work on another”, id. at 435, 103 S.Ct. at 1940, whereas in the second,
Much of counsel’s time will be devoted generally to the litigation as a whole, making it difficult to divide the hours expended on a claim-by-claim basis.Instead, the district court should focus on the significance of the overall relief obtained by the plaintiff in relation to the hours reasonably expended on the litigation.
Id. at 435, 103 S.Ct. at 1940 (emphasis added). The focus — as the emphasized phrase indicates — was on practicalities, not purism.
This reading is underscored by the Court’s disposition. Recall that the district court had refused to divide hours as between winning and losing claims. Though reversing, the Court explicitly said that, “[gjiven the interrelated nature of the facts and legal theories in this case, the District Court did not err in refusing to apportion the fee award mechanically on the basis of respon*1574dents’ success or failure on particular issues.” Id. at 438, 103 S.Ct. at 1942 (emphasis added). Acknowledging that the ultimate award may well have been consistent with its own holding, the Court remanded solely because the district court had failed to consider the relation between “the extent of success and the amount of the fee award.” Id. Thus the stress was not on some magic formula for severing or refusing to sever, which the district court must get right — “mechanically”— on pain of reversal. Rather it was on the need for the district court to make a suitable downward adjustment for wasted legal effort, and to make its rationale for the adjustment reasonably clear.
It is quite true that some courts have read Hensley somewhat in accord with the view prevailing in this case, in the sense that almost any significant overlap is deemed to prevent any sort of up-front cutback for unsuccessful claims. See, e.g., Mary Beth G. v. City of Chicago, 723 F.2d 1263, 1279 (7th Cir.1983) (“Under th[e Hensley ] analysis, an unsuccessful claim will be un related to a successful claim when the relief sought on the unsuccessful claim is intended to remedy a course of conduct entirely distinct and separate from the course of conduct that gave rise to the injury on which the relief granted is premised”) (emphasis in original). Whatever the merits of that approach, it would have perverse effects in this circuit because of our prior insistence on precisely such a cut in George Hyman Const. Co. v. Brooks, 963 F.2d 1532 (D.C.Cir.1992).
There is indisputably daylight between the fact pattern of this case and that of Brooks, but not much. In both there is one unifying core — here, the retaliatory motivation for the dismissal of plaintiff, in Brooks the injury to the left big toe. In both there are completely separate branches — here, (A) the threshold prerequisite to contractual recovery, namely plaintiffs establishing a right to be terminated only “when economic or other reasons force the Association to reduce the number of its staff’ (which the plaintiff failed to show), and (B) the D.C. Human Rights Act claim on which she ultimately made a partial recovery; in Brooks, (A) psychiatric and other consequences allegedly causing total disability, and (B) a more limited claim of partial disability. Although one might characterize Brooks as involving simply one issue (the scope of the damage from the toe injury), we said there that it was an abuse of discretion for the agency not to sever the claims for fee computation purposes, 963 F.2d at 1539, while here the court finds an abuse of discretion in the district court’s decision to sever. Moreover, in Brooks we said that “[a] cleaner and clearer demarcation between issues could not be asked for,” implying that there were plenty of cases with less related claims that could — and perhaps must — be severed. 963 F.2d at 1540. District court “discretion” within such a narrow window is scarcely worthy of the name.
To limit the district court’s discretion in this way creates a fertile ground for appeals and reversals, in conflict with the Supreme Court’s exhortation that “[a] request for attorney’s fees should not result in a second major litigation.” Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 437, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 1941, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983); accord INS v. Jean, 496 U.S. 154, 163, 110 S.Ct. 2316, 2321-22, 110 L.Ed.2d 134 (1990); Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U.S. 552, 556, 108 S.Ct. 2541, 2545, 101 L.Ed.2d 490 (1988). District court discretion is a core device to streamline fee litigation. As to highly case-specific and fact-bound issues — which means most of the issues in a fee determination — intense appellate scrutiny will not yield clear rules that either facilitate the speedy resolution of fee disputes or assure like treatment of like cases. See Mars Steel Corp. v. Continental Bank N.A., 880 F.2d 928, 933-34 (7th Cir.1989) (en banc) (deference appropriate in highly fact-specific contexts because “the role of appellate courts in establishing and articulating [general] rules of law is not at stake”); accord Ustrak v. Fairman, 851 F.2d 983, 987 (7th Cir.1988). Thus the Supreme Court stressed in Hensley that district court discretion in determining the amount of a fee “is appropriate in view of the district court’s superior understanding of the litigation and the desirability of avoiding frequent appellate review of what essentially are factual matters.” Id. at 437, 103 S.Ct. at 1941. One of course hopes that district courts will be able to thread their way be*1575tween Brooks and Goos, but I see no reason for us to create such hazards.
Ultimately, this Court’s decision here may not prove deeply troublesome. When a district court is presented with a fees request, and when the “relatedness question” is at all close, the district court may find it prudent to calculate fees in the alternative, using both of the Hensley routes. It can (1) sever the losing claims and correspondingly limit any later downward adjustment for the partial character of success, and (2) treat the claims as an aggregate, making the entire adjustment for incomplete success in a single operation — the “second” inquiry mandated by Hensley. The Seventh Circuit has observed that there will be “situations that might straddle the two types of [Hensley] reduction[s],” Nanetti v. University of Illinois at Chicago, 944 F.2d 1416, 1420 (7th Cir.1991), and has said that for such straddling cases it makes no difference which route the district judge takes so long as he does not subject the winning party to “a double reduction”. Id. “Applied to the case before us, therefore, Hensley ... offered the district court two options. It could find the time spent unsuccessfully researching and arguing the fees for tenure distinct from time spent on the salary issue — and therefore count none of the former toward the lodestar — or it could find the two fees claims interrelated, but nevertheless reduce the lodestar due to its view of the plaintiff’s ultimate success in achieving redress.” Id.
Because of this decision and Brooks, the two methods will not exactly be “options” for district courts in this circuit; if the district court pursues one route it will run the risk that the reviewing panel will find the case on the other side of the Brooks/Goos divide. Thus the prudent (though time-consuming) course will be to take both routes. The crux, as Hensley repeatedly noted, is that there be an adequate downward adjustment for misspent effort. See, e.g., 461 U.S. at 436, 103 S.Ct. at 1941 (“[ajgain, the most critical factor is the degree of success obtained”), at 440, 103 S.Ct. at 1943 (reduced fee appropriate if “the relief, however significant, is limited in comparison to the scope of the litigation as a whole”), at id. (“the district court should award only that amount of fees that is reasonable in relation to the results obtained”). Later cases confirm Hensley’s prescription of reductions for incomplete success. See, e.g., Farrar v. Hobby, — U.S.-,-, 113 S.Ct. 566, 569, 121 L.Ed.2d 494 (1992) (“the most critical factor in determining the reasonableness of a fee award is the degree of success obtained”) (plurality opinion) (internal quotations omitted); Texas Teachers Ass’n v. Garland School Dist., 489 U.S. 782, 793, 109 S.Ct. 1486, 1494, 103 L.Ed.2d 866 (1989) (“the degree of the plaintiffs overall success goes to the reasonableness of the award under Hensley ”) (unanimous opinion); City of Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561, 585, 106 S.Ct. 2686, 2699, 91 L.Ed.2d 466 (1986) (“Where recovery of private damages is the purpose of ... civil rights litigation, a district court, in fixing fees, is obligated to give primary consideration to the amount of damages awarded as compared to the amount sought”) (Powell, J., concurring in judgment). The downward adjustment seems especially appropriate in a ease such as the present one, where plaintiff not only lost on the contract claim but evidently never — in the view expressed by plaintiffs counsel at oral argument — had anything to gain from raising it in the first place.1
*1576Accordingly, if district courts pursue the dual strategy and the calculations come out identically, that will only serve to underscore the fundamentally seamless character of the inquiry. If the calculations come out differently, the district court’s less preferred view will serve as a back-up that the court of appeals may substitute if it finds error in the formal severance decision.
♦ # >k >H * #
In Nanetti the Seventh Circuit authorized the district court, in any case that “straddled” the approaches outlined by Hensley, to choose either method so long as he does not “exact[ ] a double reduction for what amounts to the same reason”. 944 F.2d at 1421. That device seems eminently sensible. Because the record leaves some uncertainty about Nanetti’s caveat, i.e., about whether such a “double reduction” may have occurred, I join the judgment to the extent that it seeks clarification on that point. Insofar as the court adopts a formalistic and impermeable barrier between the two modes sketched by Hensley, I dissent.

. At oral argument, the following colloquies occurred:
[The Court]: [I]f she [Ms. Goos] had succeeded in both claims based upon the common fact situation ... would she have gotten substantially more damages?
[Appellant's Counsel]: Oh, that’s a good point. The breach of contract claim would have produced potentially less damages than the D.C. Human Rights Act claim.
[The Court]: But let’s say that you hadn’t lost the breach of promise and that somehow the judge had said this is two things: it is both a D.C. Human Rights violation and it is a breach of the manual. Would the measure of damages, namely, what is eligible to be counted as damages, have been any different?
[Appellant's Counsel]: Absolutely not — because the breach of contract damages would overall be less than the D.C. Human Rights Act damages.
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[Appellant’s Counsel]: If we had proceeded just on breach of contract and had won that, the potential damages were less than available under the D.C. Human Rights Act.
*1576[The Court]: But, what I am saying is, what if you had done both?
[Appellant's Counsel]: If we had done both, the damages would have been no different. No different.
[The Court]: That’s why I keep asking, what did the contract claim potentially add to the force of your lawsuit?
[Appellant's Counsel]: I'm hard put right now to say anything differently. Honestly.
[The Court]: Did you suffer, did you have any potential fear that you could lose the Human Rights — was there any likelihood you could have lost the Human Rights but won on the contract?
[Appellant's Counsel]: I guess it’s possible, but all along the Human Rights Act claim was the predominant claim. Look at all of the pleadings. Look at the way the judge treated it below — look at [the way] the judge treated it below. The way opposing counsel treated it below. We all regarded it as the predominant claim in the case.