Court Opinion

ID: 9469796
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:49:24.010046+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:34.370081
License: Public Domain

PELL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
In this case the parties do not disagree with the majority opinion that in enacting 42 U.S.C. § 1988 Congress intended that a district court have the discretion to award attorneys’ fees to a prevailing party in civil rights cases pending before district courts on the 1976 effective date of the section, including fees for work performed before that date. On the facts of this case, which I do not view in quite the same way as does the majority opinion,1 it appears to me that the district court’s allowance of fees of $375,375 to the plaintiffs for work of which approximately two-thirds had occurred during a period spanning a full decade prior to 1976, rendered under the sponsorship of two not-for-profit organizations, neither of which, nor their attorneys, during that decade, expected to be compensated by the opposing party, goes beyond the reasonable boundaries indicated by the Congressional intent. I therefore respectfully dissent.
It is true that the case in the district court, which was filed in 1966, was still carried on the docket of the court in 1976 and at the time the fee award was made in 1981. Indeed, this situation remains true to this date. It is not an unusual experience in injunctive cases for a court to retain continuing jurisdiction to see that a dispositive decree is in fact implemented. The majority properly noted that other cases have been concerned that a too expansive view of pendency in equitable proceedings may not provide the basis of a claim for attorneys’ fees, this being true even though the issues which brought about the litigation have long since been settled with the court retaining only supervisory jurisdiction for implementation purposes.
In the present case the plaintiffs in 1969 had a judgment entered in their favor permanently enjoining the CHA from invidious discrimination on the basis of race in the conduct of the public housing system. The CHA was ordered to use its best efforts to increase the supply of dwelling units as rapidly as possible in conformance with the judgment. The court retained jurisdiction:
for all purposes, including enforcement and issuance, upon proper notice and motion, of orders modifying or supplementing the terms of this order upon the presentation of relevant information with respect to proposed developments designed by CHA alone or in combination with other private or public agencies to achieve results consistent with this order, material changes in conditions existing at the time of this order or any other matter.
304 F.Supp. at 741.
The majority opinion recognizes the propriety of the test laid down in Peacock v. Drew Municipal Separate School District, 433 F.Supp. 1072 (N.D.Miss.1977), aff’d, 611 F.2d 1160 (5th Cir. 1980) (per curiam) for determining the requisite pendency. The parties do not seem to disagree that the case would be pending if there was an “active” issue that had not been finally resolved at the critical time. An “active” issue was defined in Peacock as being:
*615We interpret “active” issue to mean a substantive claim upon which a district court has not acted, either in the first instance or on remand, or a substantive claim whose disposition by the district court, or Court of Appeals, either is on appeal or is appealable. The mere pend-ency on the date of enactment of an attorney fees act of supplemental proceedings to effectuate a prior final judgment is not, in our opinion, sufficient to convert an action into such a “pending action” as to warrant an award of attorney fees under such act pursuant to Bradley-type retroactive application of the act.
Id. at 1075.
As in Peacock, it appears to me from an examination of the record that proceedings subsequent to the judgment in 1969 were “nothing more than providing for enforcement of defendants’ previously established liability.” Id. It is true that implementation did not occur with any rapidity. Factors, however, beyond the control of the CHA entered into the picture including a recalcitrant city council and a moratorium on new federally financed public housing. At this point it is appropriate to refer to a factor which the majority opinion seems to blur into insignificance, and that is that there were two separate suits originally filed by the plaintiff Gautreaux — one against CHA, which is all we are concerned with here, and the other against the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The two cases were, in 1971, consolidated. At that time the district-court was not contemplating any changes in the relief ordered in 1969 against CHA and was attempting to formulate a remedy in the case against HUD. This effort continued for many years. While the remedy against HUD was not formulated until long after October 1976, the fact that CHA willy-nilly was a party in the same action with HUD should not affect its liability for fees simply because the HUD case was still viable in 1976.
In the district court, the plaintiffs themselves recognized the two cases should not be treated as one for purposes of awarding attorneys’ fees by specifically excluding from the hours for which compensation was claimed the time spent on proceedings in the companion case against HUD.
Leaving aside the case against HUD, it appears to me from the record that all of the proceedings against CHA within the relevant period from October 1976 to the present were in the nature of supplemental enforcement proceedings to effectuate a prior judgment final as to liability. The main part of those proceedings consisted of appearances before a Master at which the only goal was the “exploration of possible alternative courses in a difficult area” with a view to a final report for “possible use by the district court.” There is no indication that a more comprehensive remedy with respect to CHA was being formulated or, indeed, was ever formulated. In simple language, the 1969 order was intended to be, and in fact was, a comprehensive remedy designed to terminate the past effects of discrimination in the CHA system and prevent discrimination in the future.
By October 1976, the remedy against CHA had been fixed for more than six years. Although plaintiffs continued, of necessity, to be involved in the litigation pertaining to enforcement, it does not seem to me to be within the Congressional intent that this activity should be used to create retroactive liability for a long-past decade of legal work. Even more simply, there were no substantive claims pending in October 1976 insofar as CHA was concerned. It is of interest to note that the majority opinion chooses to distinguish cases from other circuits which have addressed generally the present matter and place principal reliance, as the district judge, on a district court case, Bolden v. Pennsylvania State Police, 491 F.Supp. 958 (E.D.Pa.1980).
The majority opinion brushes aside in a marginal note the secondary contention of CHA that if any aspects of this suit could be considered pending in October 1976, they were only, at best, supplemental proceedings in which the plaintiff did not prevail as required by Section 1988. Although CHA *616was forced into a four-year round of hearings before the Master, those hearings ultimately resulted in no order of any kind from the district court. An eventual modification of the 1969 order, not in a substantive but in a remedial enforcement sense, resulted not from the plaintiffs’ efforts but followed CHA’s resolution of its difficulties with HUD that made it possible for CHA to develop the plan that was accepted by the district courts and the plaintiffs to implement the 1969 decree.
I feel certain that the dockets of the district courts around this country reflect many cases which remain under the necessary continuing supervision of a district judge even though the substantive issúes which brought about the litigation have been disposed of long prior to October 1976. I decline to believe that the Congress intended to stand the 1976 amendment on attorneys’ fees on its head by opening these cases to attorneys’ fees going back to the institution of suit with the fees to be awarded on a monetary basis reflecting an unrealistically inflated amount inapplicable to the time at which the bulk of the services was rendered.
Finally, I am concerned by what is evident in this case of policy reasons for not expanding Section 1988 into the dim past to encompass work which not-for-profit organizations2 have performed with no expectation of securing attorneys’ fees as a result of which no accurate recordation of hours spent has been maintained. Thus, in this case it appears that the lead counsel had to rely upon what could only charitably be called an educated guess.' I think the proper standard is set forth in National Association of Concerned Veterans v. Secretary of Defense, 675 F.2d 1319 (D.C.Cir.1982) where the court states “attorneys who anticipate making a fee application must maintain contemporaneous, complete and standardized time records which accurately reflect the work done by each attorney.” (Emphasis supplied.) At 1326.

. In viewing the facts, we are concerned with whether the case against CHA was pending in October 1976 within the meaning of the Congressional intent. To do so we must look at the record of the proceedings. I regard the issue as not being a question of whether the district court abused its discretion, or whether its findings — and the record should speak for itself in that respect — were clearly erroneous, but whether as a matter of law that record reflects such pendency as will breathe life — and fees— into litigation which was no longer pending in the sense of the relief which precipitated it still being sought.

. I am not unmindful of case law holding that even though public interest organizations were willing to undertake cases such as the present prior to 1976 without expectation of securing attorneys fees, they, nevertheless, may now be entitled to such fees, even though such fees have windfall aspects; nor am I unmindful that cases have held that these fees may be substantially keyed to rates current at the time of the award although the services substantially antedated that period, but viewing the payment order in this case I cannot regard it as other than incorrect under the law.