Case Information
*1 Otis D. Wright, II, District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted June 4, 2013—Pasadena, California Filed September 9, 2013 *2 Before: Ronald M. Gould and N. Randy Smith, Circuit Judges, and Sharon L. Gleason, District Judge. [*]
Opinion by N.R. Smith
SUMMARY [**]
Civil Rights/Attorneys’ Fees
The panel vacated the district court’s attorneys’ fee award, entered pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988, and remanded for a re-computation of the fee arising from the settlement of numerous civil rights lawsuits against the City of Maywood, its police department, and several local government officials.
The panel held that the district court abused its discretion by: (1) erroneously applying across-the-board cuts to the lodestar; (2) failing to find a reasonable hourly rate on which to compute the lodestar; (3) declining to award a state-law multiplier; and (4) declining to award fees for work performed on the fee application.
[*] The Honorable Sharon L. Gleason, District Judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, sitting by designation.
[**] This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. The panel stated that in determining a reasonable fee award, the district court failed to apply the following principles: (1) that a court must compute the fee award using an hourly rate that is based on the prevailing market rates in the relevant community; (2) that when a district court reduces either the number of hours or the lodestar by a certain percentage greater than 10%, it must provide a clear and concise explanation for why it chose the specific percentage to apply; and (3) it is not per se unreasonable for the prevailing party in a civil rights case to be awarded an amount of attorneys’ fees that exceeds the amount of money recovered by his or her client. Although the panel remanded for a re-determination of the fee award, it denied plaintiffs’ request to re-assign this case to a different district judge.
COUNSEL
Paul L. Hoffman (argued) and Catherine Sweetser, Schonbrun, DeSimone, Seplow, Harris, Hoffman & Harrison, LLP, Venice, California; Cynthia Anderson-Barker, Law Office of Cynthia Anderson-Barker, Los Angeles, California; Robert Mann and Donald W. Cook, Attorneys at Law, Los Angeles, California; Ellen Hammill Ellison, Law Office of Ellen Hammill Ellison, Los Angeles, California; Olu K. Orange, Orange Law Offices, Los Angeles, California, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.
Richard A. Semon (argued) and Lee A. Wood, The Aguilera Law Group, APLC, Costa Mesa, California, for Defendants- Appellees City of Maywood, et al.
Brian P. Keighron (argued), Wisotsky, Procter & Shyer, Oxnard, California, for Defendants-Appellees Cunningham and Muriello.
OPINION
N.R. SMITH, Circuit Judge:
42 U.S.C. § 1988 authorizes district courts to award the
prevailing party in civil rights litigation a “reasonable
attorney’s fee.” Several important principles bear on the
district court’s determination of a reasonable fee amount.
First, the court must compute the fee award using an hourly
rate that is based on the “prevailing market rates in the
relevant community.”
Dang v. Cross
,
BACKGROUND
The dispute over attorney’s fees in this appeal arises from the settlement of numerous civil rights lawsuits against the City of Maywood, its police department, and several local government officials (collectively, the “City”). On August 19, 2010, following a successful mediation of eight such lawsuits, the parties entered into a Stipulation for Settlement (the “Stipulation”). [1] Under the terms of the Stipulation, Plaintiffs would receive $500,000 total. The Stipulation also provided that Plaintiffs could apply to the district court for attorney’s fees. However, the Stipulation limited any fee award to $1,000,000 for work on the merits, and $25,000 for work on the fee application.
On November 12, 2010, Plaintiffs filed a fee application in the district court for the Central District of California. Plaintiffs’ initial application computed their lodestar amount as $1,455,339 for work both on the merits and on the fee application. Because this amount exceeded the amount the Stipulation authorized, Plaintiffs requested a fee of $1,025,000. The City filed an opposition to Plaintiffs’ fee application on December 6, 2010.
The City’s opposition identified a mathematical error in Plaintiffs’ computation of their lodestar. An inadvertently placed decimal point in the sub-total for attorney Anderson- Barker’s fee produced a lodestar amount that was nearly $500,000 less than it should have been. Plaintiffs filed a The facts of the litigation underlying this appeal are largely irrelevant to the legal issues we must address. In short, on May 29, 2007, twenty- two Plaintiffs filed a joint lawsuit against the City, alleging numerous violations of their civil rights under federal and state law. Plaintiffs based their claims on nine separate incidents of misconduct involving City police officers. Subsequently, the district court severed the case into nine separate cases, grouping Plaintiffs’ claims by each alleged violation. The nine cases then proceeded separately. One case was dismissed on January 22, 2010, and the remaining eight were resolved by the Stipulation. *5 6 G ONZALEZ V . C ITY OF M AYWOOD supplemental declaration acknowledging this error one day after the City filed its opposition.
Later, Plaintiffs identified a second error in their initial lodestar computation. In a declaration filed along with their reply to the City’s opposition to the motion for attorney’s fees, Plaintiffs indicated that the arithmetic function in their word processing software had miscalculated the total number of hours attorney Ellison had worked on the case. Thus, although Plaintiffs’ motion for attorney’s fees claimed Ellison had worked 411.54 hours, correcting the computation error showed that she had actually worked 636.7 hours.
After correcting the errors in Ellison’s and Anderson- Barker’s billings, Plaintiffs computed their lodestar to be $2,059,451.50. Nevertheless, this adjustment did not affect Plaintiffs’ ultimate contention that they were entitled to receive $1,025,000 in fees—the maximum amount permitted by the Stipulation.
On January 24, 2011, the district court held a hearing on the attorney’s fee award. At the hearing, the district court indicated that it would not award fees in excess of the $500,000 that Plaintiffs had recovered:
This is offensive on its face. I have got a summary here of the various, we will call it indignities suffered by each of the plaintiffs and what their settlements have been, and then I look at the attorney’s fees request and it literally shocks the conscience.
Let me cut to the chase. If it were flipped, if what is being divided up among the plaintiffs is what the attorneys are asking for in compensation, fine. I would approve that. And then the attorneys get what you have given to your clients, that would get approved. Now, I understand that you have already convinced each of these plaintiffs to go along with whatever, and that is fine. They are free *6 to contract as they wish. They are free to resolve and compromise their claims on any terms they want, but to the extent that you come in here seeking approval of these attorney’s fees, that is not going to happen. All right. . . .
I have said what I have got to say on this issue. And I felt this all along, if the numbers were flipped, if the injured plaintiffs had received the lion’s share of this money, fine, I would have no problem. But I will not approve this. We are done.
Consistent with this position, the district court partially granted Plaintiffs’ motion for attorney’s fees in a twenty-five page order on August 22, 2011, and awarded $473,138.24 in fees. Plaintiffs timely appealed on September 13, 2011.
STANDARD OF REVIEW
“District court awards of attorney’s fees under section
1988 are reviewed for abuse of discretion.”
Corder v. Gates
,
947 F.2d 374, 377 (9th Cir. 1991). Accordingly, “[w]e
review the district court’s calculation of the reasonable hours
and the hourly rate for abuse of discretion.”
Costa v. Comm’r
of Soc. Security Admin.
,
DISCUSSION
42 U.S.C. § 1988(b) authorizes district courts to award the
“prevailing party,” in any suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a
“reasonable attorney’s fee.” The City does not dispute that
the Plaintiffs in this case were prevailing parties for purposes
of § 1988.
See Carbonell v. INS
,
Plaintiffs contend that the district court erred in determining the fee award by (1) erroneously applying across-the-board cuts to the lodestar, (2) failing to find a reasonable hourly rate on which to compute the lodestar, (3) *7 declining to award a state-law multiplier, and (4) declining to award fees for work performed on the fee application. We agree that the district court erred in these four respects and therefore vacate the fee award and remand.
To determine the amount of a reasonable fee under
§ 1988, district courts typically proceed in two steps. First,
courts generally “apply . . . the ‘lodestar’ method to
determine what constitutes a reasonable attorney’s fee.”
Costa
, 690 F.3d at 1135;
Morales v. City of San Rafael
,
I. Computation of the Lodestar
Under the lodestar method, the district court “multiplies
the number of hours the prevailing party reasonably expended
on the litigation by a reasonable hourly rate.”
Ballen
,
A. Reasonable Number of Hours
A district court, using the lodestar method to determine
the amount of attorney’s fees to award, must determine a
reasonable number of hours for which the prevailing party
should be compensated.
See, e.g.
,
Fischer v. SJB-P.D. Inc.
,
214 F.3d 1115, 1119 (9th Cir. 2000). Ultimately, a
“reasonable” number of hours equals “[t]he number of hours
. . . [which] could reasonably have been billed to a private
client.”
Moreno
,
Of course, in some cases, the prevailing party may submit
billing records which include hours that could not reasonably
be billed to a private client and, therefore, are not properly
included in a § 1988 fee award. For example, records may
contain entries for hours that are “excessive, redundant, or
otherwise unnecessary.”
McCown v. City of Fontana
,
The associative property of multiplication can be expressed as (A * B) * C = A * (B * C).
*9
In this case, Plaintiffs do not dispute that they submitted
a “massive fee application.”
See id
. After reviewing that
application, the district court determined that Plaintiffs sought
compensation for hours spent on numerous tasks that could
not “reasonably have been billed to a private client.”
See
Moreno
,
However, when a district court decides that a percentage
cut (to either the lodestar or the number of hours) is
warranted, it must “set forth a concise but clear explanation
of its reasons for choosing a given percentage reduction.”
Id.
at 1400. (internal quotation marks omitted). We have
recognized one exception to this rule: “[T]he district court
can impose a small reduction, no greater than 10 percent—a
‘haircut’—based on its exercise of discretion and without a
more specific explanation.”
Moreno
,
Here, the district court failed to give any “explanation of its reasons for choosing [any of its] given percentage reduction[s].” See Gates , 987 F.2d at 1400. The district court cut Plaintiffs’ lodestar by the following six percentages: (1) a 35% reduction for Plaintiffs’ “inappropriate and ambiguous billing format,”(2) a 20% reduction for billing entries for unrelated matters, (3) a 20% reduction for “[i]mpossible and ridiculous billing entries,” (4) a 5% reduction for “[i]mproper billing entries,” (5) a 10% reduction for “[e]ntries for clerical tasks,” and (6) a 5% reduction for “[e]ntries for travel.” Applied cumulatively, these cuts reduced Plaintiffs’ fee award by 66% from the *10 lodestar.
Because the district court failed to justify the specific
percentages it chose, it is not at all clear how these
percentages were tailored to “trimming the fat from
[Plaintiffs’] fee application.”
See id.
at 1399. For example,
we cannot tell from the district court’s written decision why
reducing the lodestar by 35% would compensate for
Plaintiffs’ poorly formatted billing records. The district court
stated that such a reduction was warranted, because “the
billing format makes
the entire record virtually
indistinguishable such that the Court cannot reasonably
determine whether ‘excessive, redundant, or otherwise
[3]
We note that none of these reductions match
Kerr
factors which are
presumably “subsumed” within the lodestar analysis.
See infra
note 11.
We further note that, although the district court’s categories seem similar,
it does not appear that the district court engaged in impermissible double
counting. Double-counting occurs when a court reduces a fee award more
than once for the same issue.
See Moreno
,
unnecessary hours’ have been billed.” Even if this may accurately describe Plaintiffs’ billing records, we can only conclude (based on the district court’s explanation) that the district court selected the number thirty-five arbitrarily.
The district court’s other cuts suffer from the same
problem. The court’s stated reason for choosing to apply an
additional 20% reduction for unrelated billing entries was that
such entries “permeate[d] the billing records” and the
“voluminous nature” of the records precluded the court from
making “line-by-line deductions.” However, the district court
did not indicate that 20% was in any way proportional to the
number of entries that suffered from this defect. Likewise,
the district court failed to adequately explain why it cut
The poor quality of billing records does not excuse the district court
from its duty to give a “concise but clear” explanation for the reductions
it might apply.
See Gates
,
14
Plaintiffs’ fees by an additional 20% for “nonsensical” billing entries. The court concluded that such entries were “not individual mistakes,” but were “evidence of counsel’s habitual inaccuracy and inefficiency evidenced throughout the entire billing record.” However, the basis for the district court’s selection of the 20% figure itself does not appear in the record.
The district court made these cuts to the Plaintiffs’ fee award in a way that further suggests it selected the specific percentages arbitrarily. For example, the district court first cut Plaintiffs’ lodestar by 35% for Plaintiffs’ poorly formatted billing records. The district court then cut the amount of fees that remained after making the 35% cut (i.e., 65% of the lodestar) by an additional 20% for unrelated billing entries. However, the district court had previously concluded that such billing entries “permeate[d] the billing records.” That conclusion—that “unrelated billing entries” “permeate the billing records”—is irreconcilable with the district court’s application of a 20% cut to a portion of the fee award that reflected only 65% of the full lodestar. If a 20% cut was warranted by a defect that occurred throughout the whole billing record, then logically that cut should be made to the full lodestar amount, which the district court had computed based on all the hours claimed in the billing records. Thus, the district court’s methodology makes its The district court’s justification for its 5% cut for billing entries related to meeting with the media and maintaining time records on the ground that “these entries do not seem to be as numerous as the other categories,” fails for the same reason. Likewise, the district court provided no justification for choosing 5% as the proper amount by which Plaintiffs’ remaining fees should be reduced for “several entries for ‘travel.’” As with the district court’s other percentages, we can only conclude that the district court chose these numbers arbitrarily.
G ONZALEZ V . C ITY OF M AYWOOD 15 decision to cut Plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees appear even more arbitrary, and falls short of the “concise but clear explanation” that we require for making across-the-board cuts to the number of hours or the lodestar. [6] See Gates , 987 F.2d at 1400.
To summarize, on remand, the district court should compute Plaintiffs’ lodestar based on a reasonable number of hours. If the district court concludes that making one or more across-the-board cuts is the most practicable way to arrive at this figure, then it must provide a clear and concise explanation to justify the specific percentage cuts it decides to apply.
B. Reasonable Hourly Rate
In addition to computing a reasonable number of hours,
the district court must determine a reasonable hourly rate to
use for attorneys and paralegals in computing the lodestar
amount.
Ballen
,
determining a reasonable hourly rate, the relevant community
is the forum in which the district court sits.”
Prison Legal
News v. Schwarzenegger
,
Here, there is no indication that the district court
computed Plaintiffs’ lodestar figure using the market rate
prevailing in the Central District of California for attorneys
and paralegals of similar “experience, skill, and reputation”
to members of Plaintiffs’ legal team working on similarly
complex matters. This alone requires us to vacate the fee
award and remand.
See Camacho v. Brigdgeport Financial,
Inc.
,
After analyzing Plaintiffs’ submissions, the district court concluded that Plaintiffs did not meet their burden of producing “satisfactory evidence” of the market rates. Id. Thus, the district court purported to “exercise its discretion to determine reasonable hourly rates based on its experience and knowledge of prevailing rates in the community.” However, no Ninth Circuit case law supports the district court’s apparent position that it could determine the hourly rates for the members of Plaintiffs’ legal team, without relying on evidence of prevailing market rates. As discussed below, the district court’s arbitrary determination of the hourly rates for Plaintiffs’ attorneys reflects this faulty premise.
1. Attorneys’ Hourly Rates
The district court reduced the hourly rate Plaintiffs
proposed for each of their attorneys by 25%. This
determination was arbitrary. It was not calculated to produce
hourly rates that are “in line with those prevailing in the
community for similar services by lawyers of reasonably
comparable skill, experience and reputation.”
Blum
, 465 U.S.
at 895 n.11. The district court did not make a finding as to
the reasonable hourly rate for each of Plaintiffs’ attorneys,
*14
who varied in these respects. Instead, the district court
appears to have simply split the difference between hourly
rates proposed by both sides for Plaintiffs’ most-experienced
attorney, and then extrapolated that result to
all
of Plaintiffs’
attorneys, disregarding the varied levels of skill, experience,
and reputation among them. On remand, the district court
must determine reasonable hourly rates based on “the
prevailing market rates in the relevant community.”
Dang
,
The court derived this number by, first, averaging hourly rates “at the high end” of the rates Plaintiffs and Defendants proposed. The court then determined that Plaintiffs’ proposed high-end hourly rate exceeded that average by 25%. The district court then reduced the rates Plaintiffs proposed for all of its lawyers—not just those whose proposed rates fell “at the high end” of the range—by 25%.
2. Paralegals’ Hourly Rates
The district court also failed to select an hourly rate for
Plaintiffs’ paralegals based on the prevailing market rate in
the relevant community.
See Perez v. Cate
,
3. Plaintiffs’ Remaining Challenges
Plaintiffs’ other challenges to the district court’s hourly
rate determination fail. First, the district court did not abuse
its discretion by refusing to use the hourly rate Plaintiffs’
attorneys had billed in two previous cases as evidence of a
reasonable hourly rate. Plaintiffs are correct that the rates
billed by attorneys in those cases are potentially relevant to
the district court’s determination of the prevailing market rate
in this case.
See United Steelworkers of Am. v. Phelps Dodge
Corp.
, 896 F.2d 403, 407 (9th Cir. 1990) (“[R]ate
determinations in other cases,
particularly those setting a rate
for the plaintiffs’ attorney
, are satisfactory evidence of the
prevailing market rate.” (emphasis added)). Nevertheless, the
district court analyzed both cases and concluded that they
were distinguishable. Significantly, the court determined that
*15
the cases were distinguishable based on factors that “are
taken into account in either the reasonable hours component
or the reasonable rate component of the lodestar calculation.”
See Cabrales v. Cnty. of L.A.
,
Second, Plaintiffs argue that the district court should not have considered the rates that attorneys Koerner and Ellison claimed to be their current hourly rate in connection with certain motions filed earlier in the case as evidence of the reasonable hourly rate. In those motions, Koerner and Ellison claimed, under oath, that they billed at a rate lower than the rate they declared to be their current hourly rate in the instant fee application. [8] The district court concluded that these discrepancies undermined the credibility of Plaintiffs’ “stated hourly rates.” Citing no authority to back their argument, Plaintiffs contend that the district court improperly considered these rates, because the earlier motions “did not involve research or skill,” and were therefore distinct from In June 2009, Koerner filed a motion for sanctions in connection with a motion to compel in which she sought compensation based on an hourly rate of $490 per hour. This was $60 per hour less than the rate of $550 per hour that Koerner requested in the current fee application. In June 2010, Ellison filed a notice of a motion to show cause, as well as a notice that—along with the show-cause motion—she would be requesting fees for time expended in bringing the motion. She filed a declaration in support of that fee request, which computed her fee based on an hourly rate of $300 per hour—$250 per hour less than the $550 per hour she sought in the instant fee application.
20 G ONZALEZ V . C ITY OF M AYWOOD the litigation as a whole, which Plaintiffs characterize as “complex.”
Plaintiffs are correct that the complexity of legal work
affects the determination of the reasonable rate.
See Davis v.
City and Cnty. of San Francisco
,
Third, Plaintiffs challenge the district court’s decision not to adopt the hourly rates suggested by Plaintiffs’ fee expert, Barrett S. Litt. Relevant here, Litt’s affidavit contained a two- column chart, listing law firms in the left column, and a corresponding hourly rate in the right column. The chart does not indicate the skill, reputation, or experience of the attorneys in those firms who billed those rates, or the types of work for which the firm billed those rates.
The district court rejected Litt’s declaration for three reasons: (1) it relied on “confidential sources” for information regarding current hourly rates; (2) the declaration only listed rates by firm, not by attorney or practice area; and (3) the declaration cited rates charged by firms larger than the ones Plaintiffs’ attorneys occupied. The district court soundly rejected Litt’s affidavit on the first two grounds. A declaration that relies on confidential sources to establish the current market rate does not assist the court, because the reliability of the information cannot be tested. Likewise, simply listing the names of law firms and the hourly rates they charge, without more, would not assist the district court in determining whether attorneys of “comparable skill, experience and reputation” commanded those rates, Dang , 422 F.3d at 814, or did so while performing similarly *17 “complex[]” legal work, Davis , 976 F.2d at 1545. Accordingly, the district court properly rejected this evidence. [9]
Fourth, Plaintiffs challenge the district court’s reliance on (1) “possible areas of overbilling,” and (2) poor results obtained as grounds for reducing the hourly rate. We reject this argument. The district court found what Plaintiffs call “overbilling” [10] and “poor results” to be evidence that Plaintiffs’ counsel provided low-quality representation. District courts may reduce counsels’ hourly rates based on such a determination. Van Gerwen v. Guarantee Mut. Life Co. , 214 F.3d 1041, 1046 (9th Cir. 2000) (“Quality of representation is generally considered at the lodestar stage in [9] We do not reach Plaintiffs’ argument that the district court incorrectly rejected the Litt affidavit on the ground that Litt cited rates charged by large national and international firms. Whether the size of the law firm is a relevant consideration in determining a reasonable hourly rate appears to be a novel legal question. Because the district court permissibly rejected Litt’s affidavit on two other grounds, we need not answer it here. [10] The district court did not conclude that Plaintiffs’ counsel had “overbilled.” It did cite conduct by Plaintiffs’ counsel that abnormally prolonged some stages of the litigation as among a “litany of ineffective lawyering.” This litany provided grounds for the district court to conclude that “Plaintiffs’ counsel failed to demonstrate the quality of representation that would be expected from attorneys charging such high rates.” determining what is a reasonable hourly rate.”). The district court was well within its discretion to conclude that these factors indicated weak representation by Plaintiffs’ counsel, which “weigh[ed] in favor” of reducing the requested hourly rates.
C. Conclusion
Although the lodestar method produces an attorney’s fee
that is presumptively reasonable when correctly applied,
see
Ballen
,
II. Adjustments to the Lodestar
After computing the lodestar figure, district courts may
adjust that figure pursuant to a “variety of factors.”
See
The district court may make such adjustments based on the twelve
“
Kerr
factors.”
See Morales
,
(1) the time and labor required, (2) the novelty and
difficulty of the questions involved, (3) the skill
requisite to perform the legal service properly, (4) the
preclusion of other employment by the attorney due to
acceptance of the case, (5) the customary fee, (6)
whether the fee is fixed or contingent, (7) time
limitations imposed by the client or the circumstances,
(8) the amount involved and the results obtained, (9) the
experience, reputation, and ability of the attorneys, (10)
Moreno
,
the “undesirability” of the case, (11) the nature and length of the professional relationship with the client, and (12) awards in similar cases.
Id.
at n.8. (quoting
Kerr v. Screen Guild Extras, Inc.
,
24 G ONZALEZ V . C ITY OF M AYWOOD At its core, the district court’s concern stemmed from the fact that Plaintiffs’ attorney’s fee request was more than double the amount that the Plaintiffs themselves had recovered. Thus, at the hearing on the motion for attorney’s fees, the district court indicated that it would have approved Plaintiffs’ fee request if the Plaintiffs had recovered twice as much as the attorneys requested in fees. The court further indicated that it would not approve the fee request Plaintiffs actually submitted, because counsel sought approximately double the amount their clients had recovered. To the extent this determination shaped the district court’s analysis of the attorney’s fee award, it was error.
It is not per se unreasonable for attorneys to receive a fee
award that exceeds the amount recovered by their clients.
This is especially true in civil rights cases, where the dollar
amount lawyers recover for their clients is not the sole
measure of the results the prevailing parties’ attorneys
obtained. Attorneys who “win[] a civil rights claim” not only
benefit their client in terms of the amount of money they
recover, “they also confer benefits on others throughout
society” by, for example, ending institutional civil rights
abuses or clarifying standards of constitutional conduct.
See
McGinnis v. Kentucky Fried Chicken of Cal.
,
Here, the eight cases against the City at issue in this
appeal appear to be the type of civil rights cases that confer
such non-monetary benefits, possibly justifying a higher fee
award. The filing and prosecution of these lawsuits, all of
*20
which alleged misconduct by City police officers, may have
contributed to the City’s loss of insurance coverage, and
subsequent decision to shut down its beleaguered police
department.
See
Ruben Vives, Jeff Gottlieb, & Hector
Becerra,
Maywood Shuts Down to Stay Alive
, L.A. Times,
June 23, 2010, at A1;
see also generally
Office of the
Attorney General, California Department of Justice, In the
Matter of the Investigation of the City of Maywood Police
Department: Attorney General’s Final Report (2009).
Consequently, it would be wrong to evaluate the extent of the
results Plaintiffs’ counsel obtained based solely on the
number of dollars they recovered for their clients. On
remand, the district court should determine a reasonable fee
amount in light of the context of this case,
see Moreno
,
III. Fees on Fees
The district court denied Plaintiffs’ request for a fee award for time spent preparing the fee application. The court gave only the following reason to support its decision on this issue: “[G]iven the myriad of problems in Plaintiffs’ presentation of their Motion, the Court declines to award Plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees for preparing the Motion itself.” On remand, the district court must reconsider this determination.
“[I]t’s now well established that time spent in preparing
fee applications under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 is compensable.”
Anderson v. Director, OWCP
,
Plaintiffs challenge the fee award on the ground that the
district court erred when it failed to analyze whether Plaintiffs
should receive a multiplier under California state law. The
district court’s silence on this issue makes “[m]eaningful
appellate review . . . impossible.”
See Narouz v. Charter
Communications, LLC
,
CONCLUSION
We vacate the fee award and remand for a re-computation
of the fee, because the district court exceeded the “great deal
of discretion”
it possesses when “determining
the
reasonableness of the fee.”
Gates
, 987 F.2d at 1398.
Although we remand for a re-determination of the fee award,
we deny Plaintiffs’ request to re-assign this case to a different
district judge. There is “no reason to believe that the district
judge will not follow both the letter and spirit of [our
opinion]” on remand.
D’Lil v. Best Western Encina Lodge &
Suites
,
VACATED and REMANDED. The parties shall bear their own costs on appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 39(a)(4).