Court Opinion

ID: 9473258
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:24:26.157819+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:25.059945
License: Public Domain

TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
Although I concur with the result reached by the court, I feel compelled to state separate grounds for so concluding.
A defendant in a civil rights case, as in other actions, is entitled to know, at the time of settlement, the full implications of that settlement including the total out of pocket cost.
As stated by the Supreme Court in White v. New Hampshire Dept. of Empl. Sec., 455 U.S. 445, 453 n. 15, 102 S.Ct. 1162, 1167 n. 15, 71 L.Ed.2d 325 (1982), “In considering whether to enter a negotiated settlement, a defendant may have good reason to demand to know his total liability from both damages and fees. Although such situations may raise difficult ethical issues for a plaintiff’s attorney, we are reluctant to hold that no resolution is ever available to ethical counsel.”
A settlement package of a civil rights action may consist of one or more of the following items: (1) monetary damages, (2) equitable relief, (3) costs, and (4) attorney’s fees. In settling a case for his client, a defendant’s counsel does his client a disservice if he settles a case as to one or more of these items, but leaves open the possibility of further recovery or action on any of the remaining ones. Within the bounds of ethics and fair play, an attorney owes a positive duty to his client to reduce his liability and his exposure to recovery, to the limits of the attorney’s ability. This applies to all the items as to which judicial relief can be sought. It cannot be questioned but that, in an appropriate case, plaintiffs, including those in a class action, can accept a settlement without any monetary damages being recovered notwithstanding that the suit initially included such a claim, or that the same result cannot be achieved with respect to equitable relief, or costs. In fact, if constitutional rights can consciously be waived by a defendant in a criminal case,1 it would be an excess in paternalism to conclude that parties to a civil dispute cannot do likewise.
This court in White v. New Hampshire Dept. of Employment Sec., 629 F.2d 697, 705 (1st Cir.1980), reversed on other grounds, 455 U.S. 445, 102 S.Ct. 1162, 71 L.Ed.2d 325 (1981), stated:
“... We of course do not suggest that an attorney in the course of settlement negotiation need, or in every case properly may, hold out, against his client’s best interest, for a specific award to be included in the correct decree. If agreement as to fees is not easily accomplished, the parties may provide for submission of *440the entire question of fees to the court; further, they may, of course, decide to waive fees altogether ...”2
With due respect to the opinion of the court in the present case, the fact that attorney’s fees are authorized in appropriate cases by virtue of Congressional enactment of Section 1988 does not prevent conscious waiver of said fees any more than does the conscious waiver of monetary damages or equitable relief, which also exist by virtue of statute (e.g. 42 U.S.C. 1983), and which, after all, are the raison d’etre of the Civil Rights Act, not the attorney’s fees provisions, which are the product of a latter-day vision.
Last, we should point to the overriding public interest in favor of the voluntary settlement of disputes, particularly where class actions are involved.3 In these days of crowded court calendars, complex disputes, and tardy results, there can be no doubt but that the voluntary resolution of litigation through settlement, constitutes the best quality of justice, and the highest service, that counsel can perform in the interest of his client and the administration of the judicial system. The removal of attorney’s fees from the arena of voluntary and ethical negotiation in civil rights cases would present an unnecessary discouragement to non-litigious disposition of these controversies.
Because we perceive no principled reason for such a result we feel compelled to clarify our views as herein stated.

. See, e.g., Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 82 L.Ed. 1461 (1938).

. Emphasis supplied.

. Cotton v. Hinton, 559 F.2d 1326 (5th Cir.1977); Airline Stewards and Stewardesses Ass’n, Local 550 v. TWA, Inc., 630 F.2d 1164 (7th Cir.1980), 455 U.S. 385, 102 S.Ct. 1127, 71 L.Ed.2d 234 (1980).