Court Opinion

ID: 9430630
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:14.732496+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:25.336567
License: Public Domain

Justice Powell,
concurring in the judgment.
I join only the Court’s judgment. The plurality opinion reads our decision in Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U. S. 424 (1983), more expansively than I would, and more expansively than is necessary to decide this case. For me affirmance— quite simply — is required by the District Court’s detailed findings of fact, which were approved by the Court of Appeals. On its face, the fee award seems unreasonable. But I find no basis for this Court to reject the findings made and approved by the courts below.
I
Because the history of the case is relevant to my views, I summarize it. City police officers, without warrants, forcibly entered a private residence where respondents were attending a party and arrested four of them. Criminal charges were lodged against those arrested, but later were dismissed. Respondents instituted this action on June 4, 1976, against petitioners city of Riverside, its Chief of Police, and *58230 police officers. In addition to compensatory and punitive damages, the complaint sought preliminary and permanent injunctions against the city and its police force to prevent further alleged “discriminatory harassment” against Mexican Americans. At some point in the proceedings, respondents abandoned their claims for injunctive relief. On January 10, 1978, the District Court granted summary judgment in favor of 17 of the defendant police officers. Following extensive discovery, the case finally went to trial on September 16, 1980. After nine days of trial, and seven days of deliberations, the jury returned verdicts against the city and only five of the officers.
Specifically, the jury found that the city and three of the officers had violated 42 U. S. C. § 1983, and awarded $13,300 in compensatory and punitive damages for these civil rights violations. The jury also concluded that the city and five of the officers, including the three found to have violated § 1983, had committed numerous acts of common-law negligence, false arrest, and false imprisonment. For these state-law claims, the jury awarded damages of $20,050, bringing total damages to $33,350. Respondents sought attorney’s fees under 42 U. S. C. § 1988. Their two lawyers, each having been admitted to practice for approximately five years, claimed compensation for 1,946.75 hours at a rate of $125 per hour each, and for 84.5 hours by law clerks at $25 per hour, for a total of $245,456.25. As emphasized by petitioners, this award was some seven times the amount of compensatory and punitive damages awarded.
The District Court approved in full the requested amount.1 On appeal, petitioners challenged only the fee award, and the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed. Rivera v. City of Riverside, 679 F. 2d 795 (1982). On May 31,1983, we granted certiorari, vacated the Court of Appeals’ judgment, and remanded the case for reconsideration in light of Hensley *583v. Eckerhart, supra. 461 U. S. 952 (1983). On remand, the District Court heard oral argument and “reconsidered the memoranda, affidavits, and exhibits previously filed by the parties, as well the record as a whole.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 2-2. That court then made explicit findings of fact, including the following that are relevant to the fee award:
1. “All claims made by plaintiffs were based on a common core of facts. The claims on which plaintiffs did not prevail were closely related to the claims on which they did prevail. The time devoted to claims on which plaintiffs did not prevail cannot reasonably be separated from time devoted to claims on which plaintiffs did prevail.”
2. “Counsel demonstrated outstanding skill and experience in handling this case.”
3. “[M]any attorneys in the community would have been reluctant to institute and to continue to prosecute this action.”
4. The number of hours claimed to have been expended by the two lawyers was “fair and reasonable.”
5. “Counsel for plaintiffs achieved excellent results for their clients, and their accomplishment in this case was outstanding. The amount of time expended by counsel . . . was reasonable and reflected sound legal judgment under the circumstances.”
6. Counsel “also served the public interest by vindicating important constitutional rights.”
7. The “hourly rate [of $125 per hour is] typical of the prevailing market rate for similar services by lawyers of comparable skill, experience and reputation within the Central District at the time these services were performed.”
8. Finally, in view of the level of success attained in this case, “the total number of hours expended by counsel [is] a proper basis for making the fee award.” Id., at 2-6 to 2-10.
*584Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a) provides that “[findings of fact [by a district court] shall not be set aside unless clearly erroneous . . . .” The Court of Appeals did not disagree with any of the foregoing findings by the District Court. I see no basis on which this Court now could hold that these findings are clearly erroneous. See Anderson v. Bessemer City, 470 U. S. 564 (1985). To be sure, some of the findings fairly can be viewed as conclusions or matters of opinion, but the findings that are critical to the judgments of the courts below are objective facts. Justice Rehnquist’s arguments in dissent suggest that the District Court may have been mistaken. But, as we observed in Bessemer City, “a reviewing court [may not] reverse the finding of the trier of fact simply because it is convinced that it would have decided the case differently.” Id., at 573.
II
I comment briefly on the principal arguments made by petitioners. They emphasize that although suit was instituted against the city, its Chief of Police, and 30 police officers, respondents prevailed only against the city and 5 of the officers. It is true that under Hensley fees should not be awarded for hours spent on claims as to which the plaintiffs were unsuccessful. Hensley also teaches, however, that where a “lawsuit consists of related claims, a plaintiff who has won substantial relief should not have his attorney’s fee reduced simply because the district court did not adopt each contention raised.” 461 U. S., at 440. Here, the District Judge who presided throughout this protracted litigation found that the claims of respondents rested on a “common core of facts,” and involved related legal theories. Since the suit was premised on one episode, the only significant variation in the facts supporting the claims against the several defendants concerned the extent of the participation by the var*585ious police officers.2 Petitioners offer no persuasive reason to question the District Court’s express finding that “[t]he time devoted to claims on which plaintiffs did not prevail cannot reasonably be separated from time devoted to claims on which plaintiffs did prevail.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 2-6 to 2-7.
Petitioners argue for a rule of proportionality between the fee awarded and the damages recovered in a civil rights case. Neither the decisions of this Court nor the legislative history of § 1988 support such a “rule.” The facts and circumstances of litigation are infinitely variable. Under Hensley, of course, “the most critical factor [in the final determination of fee awards] is the degree of success obtained.” 461 U. S., at 436. Where recovery of private damages is the purpose of a 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. In some civil rights cases, however, the court may consider the vindication of constitutional rights in addition to the amount of damages recovered. In this case, for example, the District Court made an explicit finding that the “public interest” had been served by the jury’s verdict that the warrantless entry *586was lawless and unconstitutional. Although the finding of a Fourth Amendment violation hardly can be considered a new constitutional ruling, in the special circumstances of this case, the vindication of the asserted Fourth Amendment right may well have served a public interest, supporting the amount of the fees awarded.3 As the District Court put it, there were allegations that the police misconduct was “motivated by a general hostility to the Chicano community in the area . . . .” App. to Pet. for Cert. 2-8. The record also contained evidence of racial slurs by some of the police.
Finally, petitioners also contend that in determining a proper fee under § 1988 in a suit for damages the court should consider the prevailing contingent-fee rate charged by counsel in personal injury cases. The use of contingent-fee arrangements in many types of tort cases was customary long before Congress enacted § 1988. It is clear from the legislative history that § 1988 was enacted because existing fee arrangements were thought not to provide an adequate incentive to lawyers particularly to represent plaintiffs in unpopular civil rights cases. I therefore find petitioners’ asserted analogy to personal injury claims unpersuasive in this context. Cf. Memphis Community School Dist. v. Stachura, ante, p. 299.
Ill
In sum, despite serious doubts as to the fairness of the fees awarded in this case, I cannot conclude that the detailed findings made by the District Court, and accepted by the Court of Appeals, were clearly erroneous, or that the District Court abused its discretion in making this fee award.4

 The District Court did refuse a request to double the award.

 A district court should be alert in a case such as this one to consider whether counsel, without adequate basis, may have included as defendants persons whose conduct was too peripheral to support liability or even irrelevant to the substantive allegations of the complaint. In this ease, for example, of the 30 defendant officers originally named, 17 were dismissed prior to trial, and 8 more were cleared by the jury’s verdict. Thus, only five — a small fraction of the number sued — were held liable. Such a wide difference between the number of defendants named and the number ultimately found to have any responsibility for the alleged injury could raise serious doubt as to whether counsel had reasonable grounds for suing certain defendants. Overstating the number of defendants readily could lead to inflation of billable hours and thus of the fee requested. Here, however, the District Court expressly found that “[ujnder the circumstances of this case, it was reasonable for plaintiffs initially to name thirty-one individual defendants (thirty police officers and the chief of police).” App. to Pet. for Cert. 2-4.

 It probably will be the rare ease 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.

 In Part III-B of its opinion, the plurality emphasizes that a primary purpose of § 1988 was to assure the availability of counsel in civil rights cases. This was an expressed and proper purpose of Congress when § 1988 was enacted a decade ago. Although the tables in the Annual Re*587port of the Director of the Administrative Office are not explicit in this respect, it is clear that the increased filings of civil rights cases that began following Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167 (1961), particularly § 1983 cases, have continued and even accelerated since 1976. See 1985 Annual Report of the Director of the Administrative Office 284-299 (identifying a category of “civil rights” cases, and also a category of state prisoner petitions, many of which are § 1983 eases). These facts suggest that § 1988 is serving well Congress’ purpose to assure availability of counsel, and that this purpose does not justify more generous fee awards than otherwise would be viewed as fair and reasonable.
I know of no empirical study supporting the view that aggrieved persons now have difficulty in obtaining counsel in civil rights cases. Moreover, since 1976 the number of lawyers licensed in the United States has increased from approximately 396,000, 24 Employment and Earnings 8, Table 1, United States Dept, of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (1977), to an estimated 675,000, B. Curran, The Lawyer Statistical Report 4 (1985).