Court Opinion

ID: 9789018
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:24:38.009621+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:18.695712
License: Public Domain

*1201FARE, Justice,
with whom BRYNER, Chief Justice, joins, dissenting in part.
I write separately today because I disagree with the court’s resolution of the attorney’s fees issue presented by this appeal. In my view, the award of eighty percent of actual attorney’s fees was unjustified and the matter should therefore be remanded to the superior court.
A. Susan Has Sufficiently Raised the Claim that the Enhanced Award Was Erroneous.
The court adopts a decidedly narrow reading of Susan’s briefing, asserting that she “has not argued on appeal that the reasons given by Judge Brown [for awarding enhanced attorney’s fees] were erroneous.”1 However, under the “less demanding standard” by which we judge a pro se litigant’s performance,21 believe that Susan has in fact raised this argument.
In her briefing before this court, Susan points out that “an award of attorney’s fees after trial should be based upon the appropriate criteria set forth in Civil Rule 82.”3 She also insists that the enhanced award in this case was “excessivef,] ... punitive and retaliatory.” Taken together, these two statements amount to a challenge to the appropriateness of the enhanced award and the criteria on which that award was based. In other words, Susan does argue that the reasons given by Judge Brown for awarding enhanced attorney’s fees were erroneous. I therefore believe that the court is mistaken when it suggests that we could affirm the superior court without reviewing its reasons for awarding enhanced attorney’s fees.4
B. None of Brandie’s Arguments Justified an Enhanced Award.
A review of Brandie’s memorandum in support of his request for attorney’s fees in superior court reveals that none of his arguments — arguments that the superior court apparently relied upon — justified an enhanced award of attorney’s fees in this case.
1. Complexity
Brandie admitted in superior court that “[t]his action was not inherently complex,” but argued that an enhanced award was nonetheless justified because Susan’s “unfamiliarity with certain procedures caused additional complexity.”5 Although Rule 82(b)(3)(A) does in fact generally allow the superior court to vary an.award of attorney’s fees based upon “the complexity of the litigation,” I believe that this complexity factor is a wholly inappropriate basis for an enhanced award in cases such as this — cases “where hourly fees, rather than the amount of a money judgment, serve as the measure of the fees to be awarded.”6
The primary purpose of Rule 82’s complexity factor is not to punish the losing party for litigating a complex ease, but to ensure that the prevailing party is properly compensated.7 In cases where an award of attorney’s fees is based upon a percentage of the amount of a final money judgment, the prevailing party may be substantially under or overcompensated. This potential for disproportionate compensation stems from the fact that the amount of a final money judgment is not necessarily related to the amount of hours worked by the prevailing party’s attorney or the amount of fees paid by the pre*1202vailing party for that work. Simple cases requiring little work but involving large money judgments may generate rather modest attorney’s fees,8 while complex cases requiring a great deal of work but involving small money judgments may generate robust attorney’s fees. As a result, an award of attorney’s fees based upon a final money judgment will not always accurately reflect the actual cost of litigation to a prevailing party. Rule 82’s complexity factor works to mitigate this problem. There is, however, no comparable risk of under or overcompensation when an award of attorney’s fees is based upon a percentage of the total actual hourly fees paid by the prevailing party to his or her attorney. “In general, total fees calculated on an hourly basis will already reflect the complexity of a case.”9 Using complexity as an independent enhancing factor in these cases “double-counts the effect of complexity on fees” and ultimately overcompensates the prevailing party at the expense of the losing party.10
Although the court is correct that we have repeatedly upheld the use of the complexity factor in cases where actual total hourly fees form the basis of an award of attorney’s fees,11 we have just as often questioned its use. This ease represents no less than the fourth time that we have confronted the rule’s shortcomings and explained the double-counting problem.12 On at least two occasions we have explicitly admitted that there is a “weakness in the rule.”13 When a literal reading of one of our own rules has been shown time and again to lead to questionable results, it is our responsibility to depart from precedent and articulate a limiting construction of that rule.14 In the context of Rule 82(b)(3)(A), I am convinced that this responsibility requires us to read the rule as inapplicable to eases in which awards of attorney’s fees are based upon actual total hourly fees.
In the case at hand, Brandie’s award of attorney’s fees was based upon the total hourly fees he paid to his attorney. A standard, non-enhanced award would therefore have automatically taken into account any attorney’s fees stemming from Susan’s litigation methods. An enhanced award was unnecessary and, in my opinion, contrary to the proper construction of Rule 82(b)(3)(A).
2. Length of trial
Brandie also argued that an enhanced award was justified under Rule 82(b)(3)(B) because “extensive trial preparation had necessarily been nearly completed prior to the grant of summary judgment.” But Rule 82(b)(3)(B) is exceedingly narrow in scope and only permits the court to vary an award based upon the actual “length of trial.” The rule is simply inapplicable to cases that are resolved without trial and Brandie was therefore not entitled to an enhanced award on this basis. Moreover, it was Brandie’s decision to wait to file his motion for summary *1203judgment until July 6, 2004 — only one month before the scheduled trial was to take place. In other words, Brandie had the means to avoid “extensive trial preparation” and simply chose not to exercise it. Susan should not be penalized for Brandie’s choice.
3. Reasonableness of rate, time, and number of attorneys
Brandie also argued that an enhanced award was justified because he employed a single attorney who worked a reasonable number of hours and charged a reasonable rate. Although Rules 82(b)(3)(C) and (D) do permit a superior court to vary an award of attorney’s fees based upon the reasonableness of the prevailing party’s litigation expenses,15 these factors are best suited as a basis for decreasing an award where a prevailing party has expended an unreasonable amount of resources on his or her case. In general, parties are expected under Rule 82 to keep their litigation expenses reasonable: Rule 82(b)(2) explicitly limits compensation to a portion of “reasonable actual attorney’s fees.” It is unclear why Brandie’s efforts to meet this expectation justified an enhanced award in this case.
4. Efforts to minimize fees
Brandie also argued that an enhanced award was justified under Rule 82(b)(3)(E) due to his and his attorney’s efforts to minimize attorney’s fees.16 According to Brandie, “[t]he primary minimizer of fees in this action was in causing its resolution by motion work and thereby avoiding the expense of a trial.” However, as noted above, Brandie filed his motion for summary judgment only one month prior to trial and therefore did not substantially reduce the amount of time his attorney had to invest in the case. Indeed, Brandie admits that “extensive trial preparation had necessarily been nearly completed prior to the grant of summary judgment.” Furthermore, as the court acknowledges, “[cjases resolved without trial are subject [under Rule 82] to a presumptive twenty percent fee award; cases resolved after trial to a thirty percent award.”17 Allowing a successful summary judgment motion “to be considered an ‘effort to minimize fees’ would run counter to th[is] general framework of the rule.”18
The court recognizes that we must reject Brandie’s argument “to the extent that [it] relied on his filing of a summary judgment motion” as evidence of his and his attorney’s efforts to minimize fees.19 Given that Brandie cited his summary judgment motion as “[t]he primary minimizer of fees in this action,” I believe we must reject the bulk of Brandie’s argument that he is entitled to an enhanced award under Rule 82(b)(3)(E).
5.Reasonableness of claims and vexatious or bad faith conduct
Brandie also argued that an enhanced award was justified because Susan’s claims were “inherently unreasonable and borderline bad faith.”20 Although the court is correct that a finding of bad faith under Rule 82(b)(3)(G) is sufficient to justify a substantially enhanced award,211 do not believe that the record supports such a finding in this case. Susan brought this suit after learning that her mother had transferred title to the family homestead to her brother for the sum of ten dollars. I agree that Susan was unable to offer sufficient evidence to support her claims that this transfer was somehow inappropriate, but I cannot agree that her claims were, given the circumstances, partic*1204ularly outrageous. Moreover, as the court notes, Susan’s claims implicated an issue of first impression.22 In my opinion, it is unjust to characterize claims as unreasonable when they were filed without the benefit of an authoritative body of law to guide and shape them. And although Brandie alleged that Susan’s claims were part of some sort of bad faith effort to drain his resources, he admitted that “he has no way of demonstrating that this was an intentional strategy.” In short then, while Susan’s claims may have been weak, they were not unreasonable or “borderline bad faith.”
6. Relationship between the amount of work performed and the significance of the matters at stake
Brandie also argued that “the relationship between the amount of work performed and the significance of the matters at stake justified an enhanced award.”23 In support of this argument, Brandie noted that if Susan had won by summary judgment, she would have been entitled to an award of $22,500 in attorney’s fees. According to Brandie, this amount represented the “attorney fee value of this case.” As a practical matter, however, Susan was not represented in this case and would not have been entitled to any attorney’s fees had she prevailed. Even assuming that the matters in this ease were significant in their own right, it is doubtful that this fact alone justified such a substantially enhanced award.
7. The enhanced award will deter pro se litigants from accessing the court.
In addition to the arguments detailed above, Brandie also consistently called attention to Susan’s pro se status in his motion for enhanced attorney’s fees. For example, Brandie stated that “although Susan was skilled, she is not an attorney and her unfamiliarity with certain procedures caused additional complexity”; that “as a pro se litigant, Susan often used procedures and raised arguments and issues which were inapposite or inappropriate”; that “her pro se status added an entire level of complexity to this action”; and that “[i]f Susan had been represented by counsel, ... the situation would have been resolved more quickly.” Taken together, these statements represented a not-so-subtle argument that Susan’s pro se status, in and of itself, justified an enhanced award. While the superior court did not expressly adopt this argument, it based its decision to enhance the award, at least in part, upon Rule 82’s complexity factor — a factor that Brandie repeatedly asserted was met by Susan’s pro se status.
We are left, then, with a legal proceeding in which a litigant was, at least in appearance, penalized for pursuing her case pro se. Because pro se litigants are often economically distressed, this apparent threat of a pecuniary penalty for pursuing a case pro se is particularly onerous and likely to dissuade potential pro se litigants from exercising their constitutional right to access the courts. This is unacceptable. The right to access the courts is an “important right”24 that should be enjoyed by all Alaskans equally, whether they be parolees or free,25 children or adults,26 pro se litigants or lawyers. If for no other reason, we should remand the issue of attorney’s fees so as to reassure future pro se litigants that there is no penalty for passing through the courthouse doors without an attorney at their side.
C. The Issue of Attorney’s Fees Should Be Remanded.
For the reasons stated above, I believe that the issue of attorney’s fees should be remanded to the superior court for recalculation using the appropriate factors under Rule 82(b)(3)(A)-(K). I therefore respectfully dissent.

. Op. at 1198.

. Peterson v. Ek, 93 P.3d 458, 464 n. 9 (Alaska 2004).

. Farnsworth v. Steiner, 601 P.2d 266, 272 (Alaska 1979) (emphasis added).

. Op. at 1198 (asserting that Susan has not argued that the reasons given by the superior court were erroneous and concluding that, "[o]n this basis alone, we could affirm the superior court”).

. In his Memorandum in Support of Motion for Attorney Fees, Brandie further explained that, “as a pro se litigant, Susan often used procedures and raised arguments and issues which were inapposite or inappropriate and which required additional time by defendant to resolve.”

. Tenala, Ltd. v. Fowler, 993 P.2d 447, 451 n. 19 (Alaska 1999).

. Gilbert v. State, 526 P.2d 1131, 1136 (Alaska 1974) (explaining that ”[i]t is not the purpose of Rule 82 to penalize a party for litigating a good faith claim but rather partially to compensate the prevailing party where such compensation is justified”).

. For example, when a case ends in a default judgment, the amount of the final money judgment won by the plaintiff is most often relatively large compared to the number of hours put into the case by the plaintiff’s attorney. Consequently, an award of attorney's fees based upon a percentage of the final money judgment is likely to overcompensate a plaintiff who prevails by default. In order to combat this likelihood, Rule 82(b)(4) limits compensation to a percentage of the final money judgment or reasonable actual fees, "whichever is less.”

. Cole v. Bartels, 4 P.3d 956, 960 n. 20 (Alaska 2000).

. Id.

. Op. at 1199-1200.

. Cizek v. Concerned Citizens of Eagle River Valley, Inc., 71 P.3d 845, 851 (Alaska 2003) (acknowledging that “the length and complexity of the case will be reflected in the fees themselves”); Cole, 4 P.3d at 960 n. 20 (noting that "complexity serves poorly as an independent enhancing factor where hourly fees ... serve as the subject of the award”); Tenala, 993 P.2d at 451 n. 19 (concluding that "using complexity as an enhancing factor [in cases such as this] over-counts the effect that complexity has on fees").

. Cole, 4 P.3d at 960 n. 20; Tenala, 993 P.2d at 451 n. 19.

. Under our case law, we will overrule precedent when we are "clearly convinced that the rule was originally erroneous ... and that more good than harm would result from a departure from precedent.” State v. Semancik, 99 P.3d 538, 540 (Alaska 2004) (internal quotations omitted). These requirements are easily met here.

. Under Rule 82(b)(3)(C), an award may be varied based upon "the reasonableness of the attorneys' hourly rates and the numbers of hours expended”; under Rule 82(b)(3)(D), an award may be varied based upon "the reasonableness of the number of attorneys used.”

. Rule 82(b)(3)(E) maintains that an award may be varied based upon “the attorney's efforts to minimize fees.”

. Op. at 1200 n. 54.

. Id.

. Id.

. Rule 82(b)(3)(F) maintains that an award may be varied based upon "the reasonableness of the claims and defenses pursued by each side”; Rule 82(b)(3)(G) maintains that an award may be varied based upon "vexatious or bad faith conduct.”

. Op. at 1200.

. Op. at 1192.

. Rule 82(b)(3)(H).

. Patrick v. Lynden Transp., 765 P.2d 1375, 1379 (Alaska 1988).

. Bush v. Reid, 516 P.2d 1215, 1221 (Alaska 1973).

. Sands v. Green, 156 P.3d 1130 (Alaska 2007).