Court Opinion

ID: 9503263
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 19:39:24.940805+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:21.317362
License: Public Domain

DURHAM, J.,
specially concurring.
The issues before the court concern plaintiffs’ requests for an award of attorney fees and for costs and disbursements. I join in the majority’s decision to award costs and disbursements to plaintiffs. I also agree with the majority that plaintiffs’ request for attorney fees should be denied. However, I would deny plaintiffs’ petition for attorney fees for a reason that the majority does not discuss: the petition for attorney fees does not comply with the rule that prescribes the procedure for claiming attorney fees in this case.
ORAP 13.10 provides, in part:
“(1) This rule governs the procedure for petitioning for attorney fees in all cases [subject to one exception not applicable here].
* * * *
“(5)(a) A petition shall state the total amount of attorney fees claimed and the authority relied on for claiming the fees. The petition shall be supported by a statement of facts showing the total amount of attorney time involved, the amount of time devoted to each task, the reasonableness of the amount of time claimed, the hourly rate at which time is claimed, and the reasonableness of the hourly rate.
“(b) If a petition requests attorney fees pursuant to a statute, the petition shall address any factors, including, as relevant, those factors identified in ORS 20.075(1) and (2) or ORS 20.105(1), that the court may consider in determining whether and to what extent to award attorney fees.
“(6) Objections to a petition shall be served and filed within 14 days after the date the petition is filed. A reply, if any, shall be served and filed within 14 days after the date of service of the objections.”
(Footnote omitted.)
Plaintiffs, invoking that rule, filed a petition seeking recovery of $75,000 in attorney fees in this case. The petition *126correctly asserted that plaintiffs had prevailed on their challenge to several statutory restrictions on giving gifts to public officials, candidates for office, and relatives and members of their households in connection with lobbying activities. See Vannatta v. Oregon Government Ethics Comm., 347 Or 449, 466-68, 222 P3d 1077 (2009) (discussing plaintiffs’ successful challenges to ORS 244.025(2), (3), and (4)(b) and (c).
The petition for attorney fees incorporated a detailed description of the time spent on various services by plaintiffs’ lawyers in this case, producing a total attorney fee of $113,587.24. The petition asserted that that charge would represent “a reasonable fee assuming Plaintiffs had prevailed on all of their claims.” The petition also asserted, somewhat inconsistently, that the excerpted time and charges “represent only a portion of the total time that was actually expended on this matter.” The petition explained how plaintiffs arrived at the requested fee of $75,000 in the following passage:
“Because Plaintiffs prevailed on some, but not all of their claims, Plaintiffs believe a fair fee would be $75,000.00. This discounted amount reflects the fact that Plaintiffs prevailed on one-half of their significant claims and would have had to incur certain fees notwithstanding the number of claims they addressed.”
The petition also asserted that the proposed fee award was “fair for additional reasonst,]” including the facts that plaintiff Center to Protect Free Speech had raised funds to pay for only part of the legal expenses at the trial level, but nothing for plaintiffs’ attorney fees on appeal, and that plaintiffs’ lawyers had devoted effort to resisting the consolidation of this case with other litigation but had not included that time in the fee petition in this case. The petition included no explanation of the assertion that plaintiffs had prevailed on “one-half of their significant claims.”
The state filed an objection. It asserted, among other things, that the petition provided insufficient detail about the listed time entries to allow the state (and, by inference, the court) to determine how much attorney time was spent on plaintiffs’ successful claim concerning the statutory bans on offering of gifts to public officials.
*127Plaintiffs filed a reply to the state’s objection. In their reply, plaintiffs stated that they had “suggested $75,000.00 as an appropriate fee based upon a ‘rough justice’ discounting of 50%.” The reply also stated that a “reasonable range might also be between $57,000.00 and $75,000.00[,]” and purported to explain how a figure within that range “could” be justified by applying an “alternative methodology suggested herein.” The reply then set out different categories of attorney time that, according to plaintiffs’ counsel, “could relate” to various tasks related to plaintiffs’ successful claim.
I would sustain the state’s objection, because the petition for attorney fees fails to comply with ORAP 13.10(5)(a). The petition fails to show “the reasonableness of the amount of time claimed,” as required by that rule, beyond the bare assertion that a fee of $75,000 would be, in plaintiffs’ opinion, “fair.” The petition contains no statement of the attorney time or legal services devoted to the successful claim for which plaintiffs’ requests a fee award. The practice of listing all legal services devoted to all claims, both successful and unsuccessful, forces the court and the responding party to speculate about the legal services that counsel might have devoted to the claim that was successful. ORAP 13.10(5) requires the petitioning party to identify in the petition the time reasonably claimed on the successful claim. Plaintiffs violated that requirement.
Under some circumstances, a petitioner may face a difficult if not impossible task in allocating attorney time to a particular successful claim rather than to other claims that are not eligible for an award of attorney fees. It is clear that a lawyer must perform some services in the course of litigation that are not easily divisible between successful and unsuccessful claims. An example might be the preparation of a notice of appeal. ORAP 13.10(5) requires, even in that circumstance, that the petition explain which services, in petitioner’s view, cannot be separated and why the amount of attorney time claimed nevertheless is reasonable. Petitioners do not satisfy that requirement by stating in a conclusory manner that the fee sought is “reasonable” or “fair.”
It is not the function of the reply, filed under ORAP 13.10(6), to supply the information that should have been, *128but was not, set out in the petition. That approach undermines the responding party’s all-important opportunity to state timely objections to the petition, thereby framing the issues that the court must address and resolve. This court has drawn attention in the past to the procedural significance of the responding party’s objection to a petition for attorney fees:
“In [proceedings to recover attorney fees under ORAP 13.10(5)], we generally limit our inquiry to the objections, if any, filed by the opposing party. See Kahn v. Canfield, 330 Or 10, 13-14, 998 P2d 651 (2000) (so stating). We so limit our inquiry because we are loath to undertake a wide-ranging, independent review * * *, inasmuch as any questions or doubts that we might have might not be shared by the objecting party.’ Dockins v. State Farm Ins. Co., 330 Or 1, 9, 997 P2d 859 (2000).”
Lehman v. Bradbury, 334 Or 579, 582, 54 P3d 591 (2002). For the reasons identified in Lehman, a petitioner seeking attorney fees cannot postpone making the required statement of the reasonableness of the amount claimed until the filing of the reply under ORAP 13.10(6). Petitioners’ attempt to do so here is of no avail.
Even if we were to consider the assertions that petitioners presented in their reply, they do not overcome the deficiencies regarding the petition noted above. Claims for attorney fees supported only by a conclusory claim of “rough justice” and fee formulas that “could” be conceived as justifiable are no substitute for the statements of fact required by ORAP 13.10(5).
I would permit counsel broad latitude in presenting the facts called for under ORAP 13.10(5). The rule does not impose rigid requirements that only the most fastidious petitioner could satisfy. The petition here, however, falls short of substantial compliance with ORAP 13.10(5)(a). The state’s objection in that respect is well-taken.
I do not necessarily reject the majority’s discussion of substantive shortcomings regarding the petition, but neither is there a need to address them. Logic suggests that the court should address first the state’s objection that plaintiffs’ petition for attorney fees does not comply with this court’s *129mandatory procedural requirements for a valid petition. If, as here, the petition falls short on procedural grounds, there is no need to address and decide the state’s more complex or controversial substantive objections to the petition.
Additionally, petitioners may be entitled to a more in-depth discussion of the substantive problems that the majority has identified in its opinion. For example, according to the majority, plaintiffs have obtained only a small victory here, because their constitutional right to offer gifts to public officials is qualified by a valid statutory limit on the ability of public officials to receive gifts. However, plaintiffs’ litigation succeeded in invalidating four separate statutory provisions that, according to this court, unconstitutionally restricted protected speech in the form of offers of gifts to public officials: ORS 244.025(2), (3), and (4)(b), (c). As a result, plaintiffs and other citizens will be entitled to speak on that matter to their public officials and representatives without fear of civil enforcement, fines, or other restraints. Those are not mere “ancillary” benefits to the public, or so it would seem.
The majority seeks to downplay plaintiffs’ success. But the majority does not demonstrate that plaintiffs’ success has resulted in a narrower right to speak than the plaintiffs claimed. Plaintiffs won that argument completely. Rather, the majority focuses on the audience for plaintiffs’ protected speech and, specifically, the statutory restraints that limit the authority of the audience to respond to the speech in question in a particular way {i.e., by accepting an offer of a gift). But the majority’s focus on statutory regulations on the receipt of gifts by public officials — all subject to change or repeal by the legislature — may too quickly evade the genuine public interest that gave rise to the court’s practice of awarding attorney fees in these cases in the first place: “the interest of the public in preservation of the individual liberties guaranteed against governmental infringement of the constitution * * Deras v. Myers, 272 Or 47, 66, 535 P2d 541 (1975).
The majority cites one case, Pendleton School Dist. v. State of Oregon, 347 Or 28, 217 P3d 175 (2009), in support of its assertion that it is “questionable” whether this litigation has produced a substantive benefit for the public. 348 Or at *130123-24. But, in Pendleton School District, the plaintiffs argued, erroneously, that the state constitution specifically guaranteed the higher level of school funding for which they advocated. This court concluded that the plaintiffs’ view of the meaning of the state constitution was incorrect and that the state constitution itself proscribed any judicial remedy to compel the additional school funding that the plaintiffs sought. Thus, the court’s view of the “Pyrrhic” nature of the plaintiffs’ victory resulted from its conclusion that the state constitution itself denied the remedy — increased school funding — that was the basis for the plaintiffs’ claim, and that the plaintiffs’ constitutional law arguments in that regard were incorrect.
The Pendleton School District case does not fit easily as a precedent for the majority’s action here. Plaintiffs here were correct, not incorrect, about the validity of the statutory restrictions on giving gifts to public officials. Additionally, nothing in Article I, section 8, of the Oregon Constitution limits plaintiffs’ available remedies. On the contrary, plaintiffs have obtained the usual legal remedy: this court invalidated each of the four statutory provisions, cited above, prohibiting the offering of gifts to public officials. The plaintiffs in Pendleton School District could not claim equivalent legal success or benefit in the public interest from their litigation under the state constitution.
If plaintiffs have secured more than a hollow victory for the right of free speech, that result would seemingly justify a substantively different analysis, and perhaps a different result, by this court. But, for the reasons stated earlier, there is, in this case, a logically compelling reason to avoid resolving those difficult substantive questions about plaintiffs’ petition for attorney fees: the petition does not satisfy the requirements of ORAP 13.10(5)(a). Therefore, I concur in the result that the majority reaches, but I do not join in its reason for denying the petition for attorney fees.
I specially concur.