Court Opinion

ID: 9475955
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:43:39.369449+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:02.762848
License: Public Domain

THOMAS, Senior District Judge,
specially concurring:
I reluctantly concur in this case, only because Judge Probst did not follow the guidelines set out by the Eleventh Circuit in the previous reversal of this case. But for this fact, I am completely in accord with Judge Probst’s opinion.
Attorney’s fees generally, and particularly in Title VII cases, have gone out of sight. A person, either private or corporate, cannot indulge in the luxury of litigation. It is time the courts take appropriate action.
Judge Probst in his opinion states that his action was based on “common sense and 23 years as a lawyer and five and one-half years as a Judge.” The majority opinion has this to say: “We find the district court’s ‘explanation’ inadequate and its order insufficient; we are no more able to review the disallowance of attorney’s fees based on judicial intuition, than we are able to review an award based on nothing at all.” If this case involved the question of time and effort necessary to construct a building, repair an automobile, or the like, I would agree with the above. But, on the contrary, this involves a subject that courts frequently deal with, and certainly the Court should be allowed to call upon past experience in evaluating the same. This applies not only to a trial court, but to an appellate court.
The opinion discusses the fact that the defendant in this case did not make any objection to the attorney’s hours claimed, nor the hourly rate, commenting on the fact that three attorneys testified as to the reasonableness of both issues. Any lawyer would have no difficulty in locating three of his fellow lawyers to substantiate the reasonableness of his or her claimed fee. This is not meant as an indictment of the Bar as a whole but no lawyer is going to request his fellow to testify in his behalf if he does not have reason to believe that the lawyer will accommodate. He is certainly not going to ask one that he thinks will not accommodate.
The case of Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc., 488 F.2d 714 (5th Cir. 1974), sets out a detailed formula for the fixing of fees. The courts would better themselves and the public by using common sense based on experience than following to the letter a printed formula.
The law of the Eleventh Circuit as it presently stands gives a losing party in a Title VII case absolutely no chance of contesting the prevailing party’s attorney’s fees. For to do so merely increases the fee. I am not surprised by the actions of the defendant in this case.
The plaintiff in this case was finally awarded a verdict of $20,513.69. To allow this party’s attorney a fee of $31,042.40, is not realistic. Judge Probst had every reason to cut it to $23,282.25, and even at that it is too high. I would further comment that Judge Probst, who has a better feel of this case than any other judge, was quite appropriate in his comment when he stated: “A degree of excessiveness permeated all of the claimed hours.”
With reluctance, I concur in the majority opinion.