MEMORANDUM OF DECISION
This action is before the court upon the plaintiffs’ affidavit in support of entitlement to attorney’s fees following the remand of the above-styled cause from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The questions involved in this action first arose when this court permanently enjoined the enforcement of Mississippi Code § 37-41-3 (Supp.1977), having determined that the section was unconstitutional both on its face, and as it was then applied. The defendant State of Mississippi appealed from that order of the court, but while the appeal was pending, the Mississippi legislature amended the offending statute so as to render the question of its constitutionality moot. The Fifth Circuit then dismissed the appeal, and remanded the action to this court for “an appropriate adjudication as to the reserved issue of attorney’s fees.”
Johnson
v.
State of Mississippi,
On October 3, 1978, at the conclusion of a hearing before this court on the plaintiff’s motion for an award of attorney’s fees, the court rendered a bench opinion, finding that an award of $7,500 was a “reasonable fee under all the circumstances involved.” In addition, the court allowed expenses in the amount of $200.78, and costs of $31.00. In awarding this amount, however, the court did not consider “the 15 hours spent by counsel in reviewing defendant’s objection to the award of attorney fees and memoranda filed in support of such objection.” The Court of Appeals has now concluded, however, that these hours should have been included:
We conclude that attorney’s fees may be awarded for time spent litigating the fee claim. The portion of the district court’s judgment refusing to consider fee claim time and costs is reversed. The determination of the extent to which the 15 hours claimed was reasonably necessary to review defendants’ objections, we leave to the district court.
Johnson v. State of Mississippi,
Counsel for the plaintiffs has now filed an affidavit in support of plaintiffs’ entitlement to an award of attorney’s fees. In that affidavit, counsel renews his previous request for reimbursement for 15 hours spent in reviewing the defendants’ objections to plaintiffs’ original motion for attorney’s fees. Plaintiffs’ counsel also alleges that he has spent 60.05 hours in handling the two appeals of this action to the Fifth Circuit. He requests that this court award a fee of $50.00 per hour, for a total of $3,750. In addition, counsel alleges that he is entitled to interest on this court’s original award of $7,500, at the rate of 8% per annum from the date of the award, and interest on any further awards until paid by the defendant.
Defendant does not contest the reasonableness of the 15 hours spent by plaintiffs’ counsel in reviewing defendants’ objections to the original motion for attorney’s fees, nor does the defendant contest the reasonableness of the 60 hours claimed as time spent on the two appeals. The defendants do object, however, to a rate of $50.00 per hour, and also to counsel’s claim that he is entitled to interest on an award of attorney’s fees. This memorandum will address itself to those two objections.
It is true, as defendants contend, that this court in the past, has not awarded $50.00 per hour as the standard rate for both in-court and out-of-court work.
See, e. g., Cole v. Tuttle,
At the original hearing on plaintiffs’ motion for an award of attorney’s fees, this court found that the action sub judice was “of the type which . . . calls for the skill of an experienced trial attorney in order that it might be properly analyzed and presented to the court.” Furthermore, the court found that “extraordinary skill is involved in connection with this particular ease, and I should take this into consideration in arriving at my conclusion as to the amount of fee.” These same observations are relevant to the pursuit of this case on the two appeals taken to the Fifth Circuit. The results obtained by plaintiffs’ counsel were important ones, and counsel should be compensated at a rate commensurate with the degree of legal skill necessary to obtain those results. In
Johnson, supra,
the Fifth Circuit stated that “[i]f the decision corrects across-the-board discrimination affecting a large class of an employer’s employees, the attorney’s fee award should reflect the relief granted.”
Defendants’ second objection raises a more difficult legal question, one which bears directly upon this court’s discretionary and equitable powers in awarding attorney’s fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. Defendants contend that interest .may not be awarded on attorney’s fees under this section, for two reasons. First, the defendants contend that attorney’s fees, awarded as part of the costs of the action under § 1988, cannot bear interest since interest is generally not allowed on court costs. Secondly, defendants argue that the language and legislative history of the statute controls, and the statute does not expressly authorize the payment of interest.
The court has been unable to locate any decisions or opinions which have discussed the allowance of interest on an award of attorney’s fees under § 1988, but the defendant has cited two cases as authority for the contention that interest should not be allowed. In the first,
Parker v. Califano,
*86 cite any authority that would except this case from the well-established rule that interest cannot be assessed against the United States “in the absence of an express provision to the contrary in the relevant statute or contract.” Rieherson v. Jones,551 F.2d 918 , 925 (3d Cir. 1977) quoting United States v. Tillamooks,341 U.S. 48 , 49,71 S.Ct. 552 ,95 L.Ed. 738 (1951).
Defendants also cite the recent Fifth Circuit decision in
Carpa, Inc.
v.
Ward Foods, Inc.,
Congress manifested a strong remedial purpose in its decision to reverse the historical pattern and provide for the award of attorneys’ fees to victorious plaintiffs in antitrust actions. However, Congress did not see fit to reverse the traditional practice of not awarding interest on court costs. ... In the absence of further Congressional guidance, and in light of the fact that the provision of treble damages as well as attorneys’ fees in the antitrust law affords sufficient scope to the remedial purposes ... we see no basis for stretching the applicable statutory language to provide interest on the award of attorneys’ fees to successful antitrust plaintiffs.
Congress could, of course, provide that attorneys’ fees bear interest. Our holding that attorneys’ fees in antitrust cases are not to bear interest implies nothing whatsoever about the propriety of interest on attorneys’ fees authorized by other statutes. The language and history of a given statute might suggest that the public purposes underlying the statutory authority for attorneys’ fees would be materially advanced by allowance of interest, and the absence of a treble damage provision which complements the attorneys’ fee provision would also require consideration.
The legislative history of the 1976 amendment to § 1988, providing for attorney’s fees in civil rights cases, indicates that the section must be broadly and liberally construed to achieve its intended purpose.
See, e. g., Nadeau v. Helegmoe,
In many cases arising under our civil rights laws, the citizen who must sue to enforce the law has little or no money with which to hire a lawyer. If private citizens are to be able to assert their civil rights, and if those who violate the Nation’s fundamental laws are not to proceed with impunity, then citizens must have the opportunity to recover what it costs them to vindicate these rights in court.
S.Rep.No.94-1011, 5 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, pp. 5908, 5910 (94th Cong. 2d Sess. 1976). Thus, the private citizen’s inability to vindicate his rights adequately calls for a broad exercise of this court’s equitable and discretionary powers in effectuating the purposes of § 1988. This is particularly true where, as in this action, the individual is faced with opposition from a State, with the entire resources of the State government supporting the litigation.
Many attorneys consider it part of their ethical and professional responsibility to handle litigation pro bono publico. Congress has now provided an incentive for attorneys to aid private individuals in seeking compliance with Federal laws. If this court is to carry out that legislative intent, it must not deter in any way that incentive which Congress has necessarily created. The history of this litigation demonstrates that, despite the provision for fee-shifting created in § 1988, the ability of a private individual to enforce the civil rights statutes is impaired by the opposing resources of the State. If an attorney knew that an order of this court providing for reasonable fees were to remain unenforced for well over a year, while the defendant continues to oppose the claim through the appellate process and by other means, that attorney might be deterred from handling any form of pro bono litigation. This court believes that such a result is clearly contrary to the purposes of the 1976 amendment to § 1988. Congress has stated that “the effects of fee awards are ancillary and incident to securing compliance with these laws, and that fee awards are an integral part of the remedies necessary to obtain such compliance.” S.Rep.No.94-1011, supra, at 5913. This court must take all steps necessary to ensure that this ancillary method of seeking compliance is effective.
In
Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc., supra,
the Fifth Circuit considered the criteria and standards to be utilized in awarding fees to successful litigants under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(k). The court stated that this “statute was not passed for the benefit of attorneys but to enable litigants to obtain competent counsel worthy of a contest with the caliber of counsel available to their opposition and to fairly place the economical burden of Title VII litigation.”
On two previous occasions this court has determined that an award of attorney’s fees should bear interest. Both of these cases involved either the State of Mississippi, or individual officers and agents of the State acting in their official capacities, as defendants. In Gates, et al. v. Collier, et al., GC 71-6-K (N.D.Miss. April 10, 1979), Chief Judge Keady entered a judgment providing that the sum of fees awarded should bear interest at the rate of 8% per annum from the date of the judgment until paid. The court takes note of the fact that Gates is presently on appeal to the Fifth Circuit, and that the issue of assessing interest has been argued and is presently under advisement. *88 Gates v. Collier, No. 79-1844. Similarly, in Armstrong et al. v. Reed, et al., GC 74-118-S (N.D.Miss. Aug. 7, 1979), this court entered an order requiring the State defendants to submit a requisition to the State Auditor for a warrant upon the State Treasurer, for the payment of attorney’s fees plus 8% per annum from the date of the award. Both of these cases involved protracted litigation, as does this one, a factor which leads this court to conclude that the assessment of interest is well within the court’s equitable powers.
The court will therefore enter an order providing for interest at 8% per annum on the award of $7,500.00 previously entered, and also for an award of $3,750.00 as reasonable attorney’s fees, together with 8% interest per annum from the date of the order until paid.
Notes
. In considering these criteria established in Johnson, supra, the court in this opinion adopts its previous analysis in the bench opinion of October 3, 1978, except for those portions which were reversed and remanded by the Fifth Circuit.