Court Opinion

ID: 9482204
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:43:17.844527+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:49.944595
License: Public Domain

PREGERSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I agree that the district court abused its discretion when it reduced the plaintiffs’ award of attorney’s fees. I do not agree, however, that it is ever permissible to re*384duce an award simply because the plaintiffs failed to prevail against some proportion of the defendants originally named in the suit. I would hold in part III.B. that the plaintiffs are entitled to the lodestar amount in this case.
The district court said that it reduced the attorney’s fee award by 20% to adjust for the plaintiffs’ “limited success.” The plaintiffs argue that the district court abused its discretion by reducing the award. Defendant Brown appeals, arguing that the plaintiffs’ purportedly limited success merited an even greater reduction in the fee award. I do not believe that the plaintiffs’ success was limited. Therefore, I would clearly reject defendant Brown's appeal with regard to the issue of limited success. In addition, I would not, as the majority does in part III.B. of the opinion, invite the district court to exercise its discretion a second time. The parties agree that the district court properly calculated the lodestar figure, which is a presumptively reasonable amount for an award of attorney’s fees. The plaintiffs are entitled to the lodestar amount.
In Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 103 S.Ct. 1933 (1983), the Supreme Court explained that district courts may sometimes reduce the lodestar amount when the plaintiffs, though prevailing parties, achieve only limited success in the litigation. When the unsuccessful claims are distinct in all respects from the successful claims, Hensley held that the time spent on the unsuccessful claims should not be compensated. 461 U.S. at 440, 103 S.Ct. at 1943. This is not such a case, as the claims here arise out of a single incident and a common core of facts. In such a case, Hensley made it clear that “[wjhere 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.” Id. The Supreme court in Hensley did not authorize a reduction simply because some proportion of the defendants are not found liable. When considering whether plaintiffs’ limited success merits an adjustment of the lodestar figure, district courts “should focus on the significance of the overall relief obtained by the plaintiff in relation to the hours reasonably expended on the litigation.” 461 U.S. at 435,103 S.Ct. at 1940. Because the emphasis is on the reasonableness of the number of hours spent on the litigation, a reduction is not warranted unless the attorneys expended time that was not reasonably necessary to achieve success on the claims that were successful.
In this ease, plaintiff sued forty-one defendants, prevailed against three, and won verdicts totaling $24,006. In Rivera v. City of Riverside, 763 F.2d 1580 (9th Cir. 1985), aff'd, 477 U.S. 561, 106 S.Ct. 2686, 91 L.Ed.2d 466 (1986), we upheld a fee award in very similar circumstances. In Rivera, which may be our earliest case applying Hensley, plaintiffs sued thirty-two defendants, including thirty individual officers. They prevailed against only six and won a verdict totaling $33,350. 477 U.S. at 564, 106 S.Ct. at 2689. We explained that the plaintiffs “succeeded on the most significant issue of the litigation — they proved that their civil rights had been violated by law enforcement officers.” 763 F.2d at 1582. Similarly, in the case at bar, the significant issue was identical, and the plaintiffs successfully prevailed. In both cases, all the claims stemmed from a single incident and shared a common core of facts. Nothing in Rivera suggests that the plaintiffs’ failure to prevail against twenty-five individual officers automatically justified a conclusion that plaintiffs’ success was limited or that the lodestar figure should be reduced. On the contrary, we recognized that Hensley simply required the district court to inquire whether the hours expended were reasonable in light of the success obtained. In Rivera we upheld the district court’s finding that it was reasonable for the attorneys to expend the time they did for the result they obtained.
Appellant Brown argues that plaintiffs’ failure to prevail against most of the defendants requires the conclusion that plaintiffs’ success was limited. This argument is foreclosed by our decision in Rivera, and neither the district court nor the majority opinion accept it. Nevertheless, the majori*385ty appears to adopt the position that the plaintiffs failure to prevail against most defendants is sufficient grounds, in itself, for a district court to conclude that plaintiffs success was limited. I disagree.
The majority relies on our decision in Cabrales v. County of Los Angeles, 864 F.2d 1454 (9th Cir.1988). To the extent that Cabrales is in conflict with our earlier decision in Rivera, we must regard Rivera as controlling. The majority believes that Cabrales does not conflict with Rivera, arguing that together the cases stand for the proposition that a district court enjoys wide discretion in determining whether plaintiffs success was limited. Although I agree that district courts should have much discretion in evaluating plaintiffs success, I do not believe that they can evaluate plaintiffs success by simply comparing the number of defendants found liable to the number originally named in the lawsuit. To the extent that Cabrales stands for such a proposition, I believe that it violates the principles of the Supreme Court’s decision in Hensley.
In Cabrales, the plaintiff sought to recover from the County, the Sheriff, and a host of deputies for the wrongful death of her son, who committed suicide in the county jail. The County was found liable for $150,000. I do not see how it can be said that the failure to prevail against most of the defendants demonstrates that plaintiffs success was limited. The plaintiff prevailed against the County for the full extent of the loss.1 Even if every deputy had been found individually liable, plaintiff’s recovery would have been the same. What does it matter that the jury let the individual deputies off the hook? The plaintiff’s rights have been vindicated and the plaintiff will be paid in damages.
Under the facts of Cabrales, the only conceivably valid approach for reducing the award based on “limited success” would be to reason that a portion of the attorney’s hours were not reasonably expended on the ultimate result of holding the county liable. Yet no such reasoning can be found in the Cabrales case.
I believe the better approach is reflected in the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Mary Beth G. v. City of Chicago, 728 F.2d 1263 (7th Cir.1983). That case was one of the earliest to apply the Hensley Court’s discussion of limited success to a case in which the plaintiff prevailed against only some of the defendants. Because I believe the Seventh Circuit’s discussion is particularly apt, I quote from it at length:
[T]he award of attorney’s fees for time expended in remedying illegal conduct should not turn on whether only some or all of the defendants named in connection with the conduct are ultimately held liable. Hensley clearly permits attorney’s fees to be awarded for time spent relating to matters not “distinctly different” from those on which the plaintiff ultimately succeeds. When defendants are not named frivolously in connection with the same illegal conduct, it follows that the matters involving the different defendants will always be “related.”
Although the Supreme Court in Hensley did not specifically address situations in which a plaintiff brings a claim against several defendants but obtains relief from only some of them, we have already observed that the Court’s discussion of awards of attorney’s fees is structured in terms of compensable “claims for relief.” This language suggests that all time spent in pursuit of relief for the same illegal conduct should be considered in awarding attorney’s fees once the relief sought is obtained, regardless whether the plaintiff has succeeded in obtaining the relief from only some and not all of the defendants named in connection with that conduct. Once the relief sought is obtained, the plaintiff will have succeeded. It would therefore be illogical to define compensable "claims for relief” in terms of defendants, because once the plaintiff’s claim succeeds against one de*386fendant, the plaintiff will have achieved full relief for the illegal course of conduct notwithstanding the plaintiff’s failure to obtain relief from each and every defendant. A recovery against more than one of the defendants will not enhance the amount of the damage award. We hold that when, as here, a plaintiff raises a claim for relief that relates to several defendants, not all of whom are held liable, the total time expended on the claim for relief should be counted in awarding the plaintiff attorney’s fees so long as the defendants from whom plaintiff did not obtain relief were not named frivolously. In these circumstances, the total time expended on the claim can thus be said to have been “in pursuit of the ultimate result achieved” of obtaining relief on the claim, 103 S.Ct. at 1940, and it matters not that the plaintiff was unsuccessful as to some of the defendants. The plaintiff will have obtained all the relief sought in connection with the illegal conduct.
723 F.2d at 1280-81 (citation omitted). Accord Cobb v. Miller, 818 F.2d 1227,1232-34 (5th Cir.1987). Because there is no suggestion that any of the defendants were named frivolously, the time spent litigating the successful claims should be compensated. The fact that plaintiff did not prevail against all defendants is not sufficient to support a conclusion that plaintiff’s success was limited.
Our decision in Rivera is consistent with the well-reasoned approach of the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Mary Beth G. I believe our decision in Rivera is dispositive. As in Rivera, the plaintiffs here were successful in the most important claim: their civil rights were violated. All the claims in this case were related. The defendants who escaped liability were present and were witnesses. Their depositions and testimony were required whether they were individually liable or not. The ultimate size of the monetary award is not grounds for reducing the fee award, unless the attorneys expended hours that were not reasonably necessary to achieving the success they achieved. Here, the district court apparently misunderstood the terms of the Rule 68 offer and thus erroneously concluded that the attorneys’ post-offer time did not further advance the plaintiffs’ success. There is nothing else in the district court’s order to suggest that the attorneys’ time was not well spent. Because the district court’s reasons for reducing the award were erroneous, and because the district judge identified nothing else in the record that would support a reduction in fees, there is no need to remand for the district court to exercise its discretion a second time. See Mary Beth G. v. City of Chicago, 723 F.2d 1263, 1278 (7th Cir.1983). The lodestar is the presumptively correct figure. This is not one of the rare occasions when it is proper to depart from the lodestar figure. We should therefore hold that the plaintiff is entitled to an attorney’s fee equal to the lodestar amount.

. There is no suggestion in Cabrales that the size of the verdict constituted grounds for concluding that plaintiffs success was limited.