Court Opinion

ID: 9439857
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 06:44:54.532398+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:26:37.361084
License: Public Domain

ALDRICH, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I quite agree with much of the court’s opinion. Certainly an attorney fees determination should not be a second lawsuit, and a court’s finding of the number of hours reasonably spent, and of appropriate hourly rates in part based on first hand appraisal of counsel’s ability, should not be reviewable except for special reason. Nor can I sympathize with plaintiffs’ unexplained and persistent disregard of formal methodology rules. I am much troubled, however, by the district court’s approach to a primary issue in the case, the time devoted to the state claim that would not have been spent had that issue not been included. The federal and state cases were not separate, but were totally related, even with, as defendant concedes, identical witnesses. The only difference was that federal recovery, at that time, did not include compensatory damages. Even here there was a special connection in that plaintiffs were obliged to show, even for the federal count, that their own, conceded participation, was unenjoyable and involuntary. In this circumstance, total disregard of hours charged for such items as conferences with clients; contacts with counsel for defendants, and preparation for, and taking of the deposition of defendant Smith, the principal harasser, on the ground that counsel cannot allocate and subtract, imposes an extraordinary burden.
As my brothers say, this might be an appropriate occasion to adopt the suggestion in Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 436-37, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 1941, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983), where the Court said, “The district court may attempt to identify specific hours that should be eliminated, or it may simply reduce the award to account for the limited success.” That, however, brings me to my real difficulty, the district court’s finding that this was a case where the relief obtained was “truly limited in comparison' to the scope of the litigation as a whole,” citing Hensley, 461 U.S. at 440, 103 S.Ct. at 1943. In .terms, counsel “won on one minor claim for each plaintiff.”
In Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561, 574-576, 106 S.Ct. 2686, 2694-2695, 91 L.Ed.2d 466 (1986), the Court said,
Unlike most private tort litigants, a civil rights plaintiff seeks to vindicate important civil and constitutional rights that cannot be valued solely in monetary terms_
Because damages awards do not reflect fully the public benefit advanced by civil rights litigation, Congress did not intend for fees in civil rights cases, unlike most private law cases, to depend on obtaining substantial monetary relief....
Thus, Congress recognized that reasonable attorney’s fees under § 1988 are not conditioned upon and need not be proportionate to an award of money damages.
Plaintiffs had achieved the maximum possible recovery on the federal claims, including an order against defendant employer to improve its internal procedures with respect to sexual harassment. By its dwelling at length on the state dollars sought and, though not applying them mathematically, concluding the federal claim “minor” I cannot but think that the district court greatly depreciated the Civil Rights Act, *11seriously impairing its discretion, I would favor reconsideration.