H.C., INDIVIDUALLY, AND ON BEHALF OF J.C., A CHILD WITH A DISABILITY v. NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
No. 21-1582
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
June 21, 2023
ARGUED: MAY 1, 2023
DECIDED: JUNE 21, 2023
Before: JACOBS, MENASHI, and MERRIAM, Circuit Judges.
Each appellant in these tandem appeals is a parent of a disabled child. Arguing that his or her child was entitled to benefits under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”),
BENJAMIN M. KOPP (Andrew K. Cuddy, on the briefs), Cuddy Law Firm, P.L.L.C., Auburn, NY, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.
REBECCA VISGAITIS (Richard P. Dearing, Clause S. Platton, Julie Steiner, Jane L. Gordon, Jesse A. Townsend, MacKenzie Fillow, Kate Fletcher, Devin Slack, Philip W. Young, on the briefs) for Hon. Sylvia O. Hinds-Radix, Corporation Counsel of the City of New York, New York, NY, for Defendant-Appellee.
BENJAMIN M. KOPP, Cuddy Law Firm, P.L.L.C., Auburn, NY, for Defendants-Counter-Claimants-Appellants.
Mark C. Rushfield, Shaw, Perelson, May & Lambert, LLP, Poughkeepsie, NY, for Plaintiff-Counter-Defendаnt-Appellee.
These tandem appeals concern an important issue in our education law: fee shifting under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”),
BACKGROUND
Each appellant in these cases is the parent of a disabled child. The appellees are the local education agencies (“LEAs”) that the IDEA requires to provide services for each child.
In eаch case, the parent brought an administrative action under the IDEA against the child’s LEA. The Cuddy Law Firm (“CLF”) was retained to represent the parent and child in those administrative actions. Ultimately, CLF’s services were effective: the parents and children prevailed in each of the proceedings.1 CLF then sought compensation for its services. But when the parents and CLF requеsted that the LEAs pay CLF’s fees, the LEAs refused on the ground that the fees requested were unreasonable.
As a result, the parents brought these individual actions in federal court seeking attorneys’ fees pursuant to
calculated a reasonable fee and ordered the LEA to pay that fee. The parents and CLF appealed.
DISCUSSION
“We review a district court’s award fоr attorney’s fees, expenses, and costs for abuse of discretion.” Lilly v. City of New York, 934 F.3d 222, 227 (2d Cir. 2019). Our review is “highly deferential” in this area because of “the district court’s inherent institutional advantages” in determining attorneys’ fees. Toussaint v. JJ Weiser, Inc., 648 F.3d 108, 111 (2d Cir. 2011) (quoting McDonald ex rel. Prendergast v. Pension Plan of the NYSA-ILA Pension Tr. Fund, 450 F.3d 91, 96 (2d Cir. 2006)). Fee disputes “essentially are factual matters,” and the district courts have a “superior understanding of the litigation.” Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 437 (1983). Moreover, the “essential goal” of fee shifting “is to do rough justice, not to achieve auditing perfection.” Fox v. Vice, 563 U.S. 826, 838 (2011). For these reasons, the Supreme Court has said that it “can hardly think of a sphere of judicial decisionmaking in which appellate micromanagement has less to recommend it.” Id.
The IDEA provides that “the court, in its discretion, may award reasonable attоrneys’ fees as part of the costs ... to a prevailing party who is the parent of a
To calculate reasonable attorneys’ fees under the IDEA, cоurts apply the “lodestar” method. A.R. ex rel. R.V. v. N.Y.C. Dep’t of Educ., 407 F.3d 65, 79 (2d Cir. 2005). Under the lodestar method, a “fee award is derived by multiplying the number of hours reasonably expended
on the litigation [by] a reasonable hourly rate.” G.M. ex rel. R.F. v. New Britain Bd. of Educ., 173 F.3d 77, 84 (2d Cir. 1999) (internal quotation marks omitted). In “rare circumstances,” the “district court may adjust the lodestar when it does not adequately take into account a factor that may properly be considered in determining a reasonablе fee.” Millea v. Metro-North R.R. Co., 658 F.3d 154, 167 (2d Cir. 2011) (internal quotation marks omitted).
In determining the first component of the lodestar—the number of hours reasonably expended—the district court may exclude hours that are “excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary.” Raja v. Burns, 43 F.4th 80, 87 (2d Cir. 2022) (quoting Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434). But the district court also “has discretion simply to deduct a reasonable percentage of the number of hours claimed as a practical means of trimming fat from a fee application.” Id. The other component of the lodestar—the reasonable hourly rate—“is the rate a paying client would be willing to pay,” Arbor Hill Concerned Citizens Neighborhood Ass’n. v. County of Albany, 522 F.3d 182, 190 (2d Cir. 2008), after “considering all pertinent factors, including the Johnson factors,” Lilly, 934 F.3d at 230 (referencing Johnson v. Ga. Highway Express, Inc., 488 F.2d 714 (5th Cir. 1974)).2
I
Here, we are persuaded that there was no abuse of discretion in the district courts’ calculation of reasonable attorneys’ fees in each case. For example, the district court in J.R. cited recent cases from the Southern District of New York to determine the “prevailing market rate for experienced, special-education attorneys in the New York area” as the statute requires. J.R. v. N.Y.C. Dep’t of Educ., No. 19-CV-11783, 2021 WL 3406370, at *3 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 4, 2021). The district court noted that it considered all the Johnson factors, and it made specific findings as to several of those factors: the case posed issues that were not “especially novel or difficult,” the subject matter was not “undesirable,” and the administrative proceedings took—in total—“less than two hours.” Id. at *4. The district court lowered the hourly rates for attorneys and paralegals on those grounds. It also found that the number of hours billed were excessive given that the matter “lack[ed] … complexity,” so the district court reduced the total number of hours by twenty percent. Id. at *5. With these
CLF makes two principal counterarguments on appeаl. First, CLF argues that the district courts erred as a matter of law by evaluating the complexity of the underlying disputes twice: when considering the number of hours reasonably expended as well as when considering the reasonable hourly rate. CLF claims that this “double deduct[ion],” N.G.B. Br. 56, violated our statement in Millea that a district court may not “double-count[] … factors.” 658 F.3d at 167. In Millea, we said that a district court “may not adjust the lodestar based on factors alrеady included in the lodestar calculation itself.” Id. In other words, the district court may not use a factor both to
compute the lodestar and to adjust the lodestar once it has been computed. The district courts here did something different, consulting the same factor when evaluating both components of the lodestar—reasonable hours and reasonablе rates. CLF provides no reason to think that was impermissible. In fact, the complexity of the underlying dispute affects those two components of the lodestar. One of the Johnson factors is “[t]he novelty and difficulty of the questions” presented in the matter, so the complexity of the matter factors into the reasonable hourly rate. 488 F.2d at 718; see also Lilly, 934 F.3d at 228. If a matter is complex, an attornеy will reasonably expend more hours on it, but a simple matter will be subject to additional reductions in hours expended. We therefore hold that a district court does not err when it considers the complexity of the dispute both when it evaluates the time reasonably expended as well as the reasonable hourly rate. We see no error in the district courts’ lodеstar calculations in this respect.
Second, CLF argues that it was erroneous to reduce its requested award at all because the LEAs unreasonably protracted the proceedings. See, e.g., M.H. Br. 33. CLF’s argument proceeds as follows. Subparagraph F of the statute,
CLF’s argument cannot prevail here because none of the district courts found as a factual matter that the LEAs unreasonably protracted the proceedings. For example, the district court in H.C. acknowledged that the LEA “fail[ed] to offer substantive relief at the resolution session,” “fail[ed] to adopt a consistent position on whether [it] would defend the case,” and “delay[ed] implementation” of the hearing officer’s final decision—which means that the LEA could have hastened the proceedings if it had been better organized. H.C. v. N.Y.C. Dep’t of Educ., No. 20-CV-844, 2021 WL 2471195, at *8 (S.D.N.Y. June 17, 2021). But the LEAs’ apparent disorganization in these cases dоes not necessarily establish that the LEA persisted when “there was absolutely no need to continue litigating,” which would suggest unreasonable protraction. Gary G. v. El Paso Indep. Sch. Dist., 632 F.3d 201, 211 (5th Cir. 2011) (internal
For that reason, we are not left with “a definite and firm conviction that the district court made a mistake” when it found no unreasonable protraction here, so we identify no clear error. Gater Assets Ltd. v. AO Moldovagaz, 2 F.4th 42, 52 (2d Cir. 2021) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also McDaniel v. County of Schenectady, 595 F.3d 411, 416 (2d Cir. 2010) (noting that a “cleаrly erroneous factual finding” is an abuse of discretion).
Moreover, even if a district court had found that an LEA unreasonably protracted the proceedings,3 Subparagraph G would
not prohibit that district court from reducing the fees requested. That is because the IDEA authorizes an award only of “reasonable attorneys’ fees,”
For these reasons, we conclude that the district court in each case did not abuse its discretion when it awarded attorneys’ fees. We affirm the judgments—except as noted below with respect to No. 21-1961, M.D. v. New York City Department of Education.
II
CLF argues on appeal that the district courts should have awarded prejudgment interest here. But “[i]n a suit to enforce a
“would not entitle CLF to more than a reasonable attorney’s fee” because “the plain language of the statute” authorizes only reasonable attorneys’ fees. Id.
federal right, the question of whether or not to award prejudgment interest is ordinarily left to the discretion of the district court.” Gierlinger v. Gleason, 160 F.3d 858, 873 (2d Cir. 1998). The district courts that declined to аward prejudgment interest did not abuse their discretion because “delay[s] in payment” may be remedied by “application of current rather than historic hourly rates.” Missouri v. Jenkins ex rel. Agyei, 491 U.S. 274, 284 (1989); see M.H. v. N.Y.C. Dep’t of Educ., No. 20-CV-1923, 2021 WL 4804031, at *31 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 13, 2021) (“The Court thus concludes that in IDEA cases, as in other fee-shifting contexts, the Court should take into account ‘delay’ by using current
We note that district courts may award prejudgment interest under
For these reasons, we will not disturb the district courts’ decisions with respect to prejudgment interest.
III
C.S. and S.S. contend that the district court erred when it failed to specify an entitlement to post-judgment interest in its judgment awarding attorney fees. “Pursuant to
Workers Int’l Ass’n, 852 F.3d 217, 223 (2d Cir. 2017) (alteration omitted) (quoting Lewis v. Whelan, 99 F.3d 542, 545 (2d Cir. 1996)). For that reason, we understand the district court’s order to include post-judgment interest on the awarded fees and costs. We affirm the judgment based on that understanding.
IV
Separately, M.H. contends that the New York City Department of Education (“DOE”) violated the impartial hearing officer’s order and thаt she was entitled to equitable relief. See M.H. Br. 20. We affirm the district court’s dismissal of M.H.’s claims for equitable relief because the DOE has complied with the order: (1) the DOE has paid the invoices for all applied behavior analysis provided to M.H.; (2) as required, the DOE developed a new individualized education program (“IEP”) that placed the student in a non-public school that provides applied behavior analysis services; (3) there was no requirement that the IEP reference home-based applied behavior analysis and it is undisputed that there are no outstanding invoices for such services; (4) at the time of the complaint, M.H. had not chosen a provider for the occupational therapy services and the order rеquires the DOE to fund such services at the parent’s chosen provider; and (5) the DOE confirmed that parent counseling and training services hours were outstanding and that it would pay for such services once M.H. had chosen a provider.
V
Last, CLF claims that the district court erred in denying it fees for time spent traveling to the administrative hearing for M.D.4 We agree.
The district court abused its discretion when it denied any travel-related fees to M.D.’s counsel. The district court reasoned that no fee award for time
travel-related fees. M.D., 2021 WL 3030053, at *6; see also J.R., 2021 WL 3406370, at *6 (awarding two hours of travel time); D.P. v. N.Y.C. Dep’t of Educ., No. 21-CV-27, 2022 WL 103536, at *13 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 10, 2022) (same). We otherwise affirm.
* * *
We have considered the appellants’ remaining arguments, which we conclude are without merit. For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the district court’s denial of travel-related fees in No. 21-1961 and remand for further proceedings. We otherwise affirm the judgments of the district courts.