Carmen Llerena DIAZ, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. JITEN HOTEL MANAGEMENT, INC., Defendant, Appellant.
No. 13-1444.
United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
Dec. 18, 2013.
741 F.3d 170
Lynn A. Leonard for appellee.
Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, THOMPSON and KAYATTA, Circuit Judges.
Before us now for the third time, this case focuses our attention on whether the mandate we issued last time the case was before us foreclosed an otherwise unchallenged use of
I. Facts
After losing her job as executive housekeeper at the Holiday Inn Hotel in Dorchester, Massachusetts, Carmen Diaz brought claims against the operator of the hotel, Jiten Hotel Management, Inc., for (1) violating the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA“),
Diaz obtained a jury verdict on the state claim in the amount of $7,650. Judgment was entered in her favor and affirmed on appeal. See Diaz v. Jiten Hotel Mgmt., Inc., 671 F.3d 78 (1st Cir. 2012). She then proceeded to seek attorney‘s fees for all hours reasonably spent on the entire case, plus costs.
In response, Jiten argued that Diaz should not receive fees and costs attributable to her unsuccessful claims. The district court agreed, deciding to reduce Diaz‘s fees to account for the fact that much of counsel‘s time was devoted to pursuing claims that were dropped or dismissed. Explained the court:
Based on this procedural history, this Court will reduce Diaz‘s requested attorneys’ fees by two-thirds, reflecting the four of her six claims that she either voluntarily dismissed after realizing that they were not viable or acknowledged were barred by statute. Hours spent working on such untenable claims “cannot be deemed to have been ‘expended in pursuit of the ultimate result achieved.‘” [Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 435, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983)] (quoting Davis v. County of Los Angeles, No. 73-63-WPG, 1974 WL 180, at *3 (C.D.Cal. June 5, 1974)). Ideally, the Court would be able specifically to reduce the request by the number of hours worked on the unviable claims. The Invoices do not, however, provide a level of detail to allow the Court to do so. The Court therefore uses the two-thirds deduction as an approximation for the number of hours spent working on the four claims that were not viable.
Diaz v. Jiten Hotel Mgmt., Inc., 822 F.Supp.2d 74, 80 (D.Mass. 2011).
After arriving at a reduced lodestar1 of $44,766, the district court then
On appeal, Diaz challenged both reductions. She contended, first, that the district court should not have concluded that time spent on her unsuccessful claims could be severed from time spent on her successful one. As a result, she argued, the district court should not have reduced her fee request merely because some counts fell on the way to her victory on the state law discrimination claim. She contended further that the district court had independently abused its discretion by adjusting the fees downward to account for her rejection of the settlement offer. See Diaz v. Jiten Hotel Management, Inc., 704 F.3d 150 (1st Cir. 2012).
Recognizing that the calculation of fee awards calls for an exercise of discretion, we rejected Diaz‘s challenge to the decision to reduce the lodestar to account for the four dropped claims. Simply put, the district court had ample discretion in such matters, and it did not abuse that discretion by refusing to make Jiten pay for attorney‘s fees incurred by Diaz in the pursuit of unsuccessful and largely independent claims. Id. at 153–54.
Though we found no abuse of discretion in the exclusion of unsuccessful claims, we held that the district court had erred in further reducing the attorney‘s fees on account of Diaz‘s rejection of the settlement offer. Id. at 154. In doing so, we noted that the rules surrounding fee-shifting in civil rights cases are “based on full compensation for the work performed.” Id. Our mandate, which issued on October 11, 2012, set aside the second reduction, but also instructed the district court to “re-evaluate the twelve Hensley factors and determine whether any further reduction to the fee award is proper,” id. (footnote omitted),2 to re-examine its reduction of costs, as it had erroneously excluded the costs of a number of depositions, id. at 154-55, and to recalculate both the damages award (to reflect pre-judgment interest) and the attorney‘s fee award (to include post-judgment interest), id. at 155.
On remand, Diaz for the first time argued that in deducting for time spent on unsuccessful claims, the district court should have used a different, more refined methodology than simply subtracting two-thirds of the total hours. Diaz‘s belated argument came in the form of a
After again demurring, the district court later accepted Diaz‘s argument. Adhering to the principle that Diaz should not receive fees incurred in pursuit of unsuccessful claims, the district court reapportioned the hours devoted to the case more accurately between successful and unsuccessful claims by proportionately reducing Diaz‘s lodestar only to the extent that fees were incurred when some or all of the unsuccessful claims remained pending.4 The district court classified this alteration of its prior calculation as a correction under
The district court found no reason to make any further reductions. While the order made no express mention of the Hensley factors, it stated that “[s]ilence on a matter reflects this Court‘s conclusion that its earlier opinion accurately reflects the law and the decision on this matter and requires no further elaboration,” and further noted that “[t]he Court sees no significant reason to make any further adjustments up or down.” After the district court entered judgment for Diaz in the amount of $93,945 in fees and $10,681.34 in costs, Jiten filed this appeal.
II. Analysis
Jiten raises three discrete challenges to the district court‘s judgment. First, it argues that the mandate rule precluded the district court from granting Diaz‘s
We address these arguments in turn.
A. The Mandate Rule
District courts have discretion under
Jiten is correct that an appellate mandate constrains the scope of proceedings on remand. The mandate rule, which at base requires a court to “scrupulously and fully” carry out a higher court‘s order after remand, helps to maintain “proper working relationships” between the various courts in our multi-tiered federal judiciary. See, e.g., Doe v. Chao, 511 F.3d 461, 465 (4th Cir. 2007) (“Few legal precepts are as firmly established as the doctrine that the mandate of a higher court is controlling as to matters within its compass.” (internal quotation marks omitted)); United States v. Bell, 988 F.2d 247, 251 (1st Cir. 1993). Thus, as we observed in Biggins v. Hazen Paper Co., 111 F.3d 205, 209 (1st Cir. 1997), “the mandate of an appellate court forecloses the lower court from reconsidering matters determined in the appellate court.” (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Elias v. Ford Motor Co., 734 F.2d 463, 465 (1st Cir. 1984). This foreclosure of efforts to reconsider what the appellate court has decided admits of only the narrowest exceptions. Bell, 988 F.2d at 250-51; see also United States v. Connell, 6 F.3d 27, 30 (1st Cir. 1993); Doe, 511 F.3d at 464-66 (“The mandate rule is a more powerful version of the law of the case doctrine.” (internal quotation marks omitted)).
Nothing in the mandate rule, however, divests the district court altogether of its ability to correct “clerical mistake[s],” “oversight[s],” or “omission[s],” see
The key question, therefore, is whether anything in our prior opinions in this case, including our most recent mandate, either expressly or impliedly divested the district court of its otherwise continuing discretion to correct an oversight that caused the judgment to fail to reflect the trial court‘s previously stated intentions (that is, that the reduction apply only to time spent on unsuccessful claims). And since there is certainly no express language in our mandate precluding in any way the relief ordered on remand, Jiten must rely on a contention that our mandate implicitly precluded any increase in the fee award other than what we expressly ordered.
In support of such a contention, Jiten points out that the prior appeal expressly addressed and affirmed the two-thirds reduction. This is true, but our prior analysis and ruling did not indicate that the court‘s method was the only possible way to calculate the reduction. Rather, we simply sustained the district court‘s discretion to make a deduction to account for the four unsuccessful claims. We had no
Jiten also points out that our prior mandate, while enumerating specific increases in the lodestar calculation, also specified that the district court was to determine “whether any further reduction to the fee award is proper.” See Diaz, 704 F.3d at 154. In Jiten‘s view, this specific command to consider further reductions implicitly precluded the district court from considering anything else. Our precedent is squarely to the contrary. Kashner Davidson Sec. Corp. v. Mscisz, 601 F.3d 19, 24 (1st Cir. 2010) (“The district court was not constrained to perform only those actions that we specifically listed in the mandate.“). Moreover, this is not a case in which the logic of our prior opinion implied any judgment that the amount of the award exhausted the maximum reach of the district court‘s discretion. Simply put, we did not consider the matter.
Of course, a reason why we did not address the mathematical accuracy of the method used to make the two-thirds reduction was that Diaz herself never raised the issue on the prior appeal, or in the district court prior to that appeal. Because she easily could have raised the issue before the district court first entered judgment on her fee request, she likely waived any right to have either this court or the district court entertain it after appeal and remand. If a district court is so inclined, however, it may correct a judgment “on its own.”
In so concluding, we remain sympathetic to the notion that litigation should move in the direction of a resolution. And the law of the case doctrine serves, in part, to further the interest in bringing litigation to a close. See, e.g., United States v. U.S. Smelting, Ref., & Mining Co., 339 U.S. 186, 198-99, 70 S.Ct. 537, 94 L.Ed. 750 (1950). “Remand” is therefore not “reopen.” See, e.g., Bell, 988 F.2d at 250-52. And the balance between stability and precision should tilt more towards the former once a case has progressed beyond final judgment and through an appeal. See Harlow v. Children‘s Hosp., 432 F.3d 50, 55-56 (1st Cir. 2005). In our experience, though, district courts generally adhere to this view, perhaps even more firmly than do we. By simply affirming that the district courts retain on remand their narrowly circumscribed authority under
B. The Hensley Factors
Our most recent mandate in this case specified that on remand, the district
While the district court could have been both more responsive and more helpful had it provided a more detailed explanation as to how it was exercising its discretion on remand, its failure to do so does not lead us to adopt Jiten‘s conclusion. On remand, the district court explicitly noted that it “[took] its earlier attorney‘s fees and costs determination...as its starting point.” Although it did not again incant the reasons guiding the exercise of its discretion in declining to adjust the award in light of the Hensley factors, it had previously enumerated its reasons as to eight of them. We had then rejected its reasons for adjusting downward on the basis of the remaining four. See Diaz, 704 F.3d at 154 (“[W]e conclude the district court‘s fee reduction improperly focused on Diaz‘s rejection of the settlement offer.“). The district court‘s statement makes clear that the court declined on remand to adjust its prior analysis as to any of the factors, not that it declined to consider the factors at all. See Berman v. Linnane, 434 Mass. 301, 303, 748 N.E.2d 466 (2001) (holding that in applying the factors under the Massachusetts fee-shifting statute at issue here, “a factor-by-factor analysis, although helpful, is not required“). We therefore reject Jiten‘s claim.
C. The Proportionality of the Fee Award
This brings us, finally, to Jiten‘s argument that the district court committed reversible error by failing to calibrate the amount of the fee award to the amount of the damages obtained. Jiten urges upon us the proposal that an award “needs to be” proportional to the relief obtained, because “there is little social benefit to encouraging attorneys to spend resources...that are disproportionate to the results of the litigation.” Because the district court awarded over $100,000 in fees and costs after the jury awarded only $7,650 in damages, “the disparity between the fees requested and the result obtained for Diaz is self evident,” and the award must, Jiten says, be vacated.
Aware that a district court must undertake a number of judgment calls in order to determine the extent of a fee
The Massachusetts statute under which Diaz prevailed,
As the principle of full compensation suggests, Jiten‘s emphasis on “proportionality” as determinative of reasonableness runs directly counter to fundamental precepts of Massachusetts law. See, e.g., Twin Fires Inv., LLC v. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., 445 Mass. 411, 429-30, 837 N.E.2d 1121 (2005). Under state law, “a judge must examine a number of factors to determine whether an award of attorney‘s fees and costs is reasonable.” Id. “No one factor is determinative.” Berman, 434 Mass. at 303.
Relying on that principle, we recently held that a district court had in fact abused its discretion when it “appeared to treat the damages award as the only significant result obtained” under chapter 151B. Joyce, 720 F.3d at 31. We noted that “even if [a lawsuit] achieve[s] nothing other than compensatory relief” for the plaintiff, it is an error of law “for the district court to link the amount of recoverable attorney‘s fees solely to the amount of damages.” Id. We further noted that “[f]ee-shifting provisions in general reflect a legislative judgment that ‘the public as a whole has an interest in the vindication of the rights conferred by the statutes.‘” Id. (quoting City of Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561, 574, 106 S.Ct. 2686, 91 L.Ed.2d 466 (1986) (internal quotation marks omitted)). Thus, while the “results obtained” in litigation are a “preeminent consideration in the fee-adjustment process,” such results can consist of “a plaintiff‘s success claim by claim, or [of] the relief actually achieved, or [of] the societal importance of the right which has been vindicated, or [of] all of these measures in combination.” Joyce, 720 F.3d at 27. Jiten‘s narrow focus on the jury award evinces a misinterpretation of Massachusetts law.
This case produced a substantial order clarifying the stray remarks doctrine, see Diaz v. Jiten Hotel Mgmt., Inc., 762 F.Supp.2d 319 (D.Mass.2011), as well
III. Conclusion
For the reasons explained above, the judgment below is affirmed. Each party shall bear its own costs and fees on this third appeal, which would have been unnecessary had Plaintiff timely proposed the correction that the district court ultimately adopted.
So ordered.
KAYATTA
CIRCUIT JUDGE