The harsh lessons of attorneys' fees appeals

I rarely see successful appeals challenging the trial court's award of attorneys' fees when plaintiff's counsel wins a civil rights case. The Court of Appeals is quite deferential to the trial court's attorneys' fees award, suggesting that this determination is largely within the district court's responsibility, and the appellate judges will not get their hands dirty on these billing issues. This case proves that point yet again.

The case is Chaparro v. John Varvatos Enterprises, Inc., a summary order issued on November 4. This case was brought under the Equal Pay Act. Plaintiffs won the case and were awarded nearly $750,000 in damages. Their lawyers then moved for attorneys' fees. The district court awarded counsel $105,000 in fees to be paid from the damages award allocated to punitive damages. That's good money, but counsel appeals, claiming they were entitled to more money.

The attorneys first argue that the district court's hourly rate was too low. The rates ranged from $250.00 to $450.00 per hour for the lawyers. The district court declined to award higher rates, reasoning that "There are effective attorneys at lower prices [than those sought by Plaintiffs-Appellants] for experienced litigators." In non-legalese, this means that, in theory, plaintiffs could have hired lawyers for less money. This is a theoretical proposition since most civil rights plaintiffs do not pay their lawyers any money at all.  But the courts like to use an objective test in fixing an hourly rate in these cases. The Court of Appeals does not like to second-guess these determinations, figuring the trial courts have a better handle on these issues than the appellate judges. 

With that in mind, while the trial court praised plaintiffs' counsel for their excellent work in the courtroom and their quality of their written submissions, it also held "the litigation of this case positioned counsel to demonstrate expertise in class action and employment law that did not exist before. The hourly rates fall within the reasonable range in the Eastern District and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in rejecting counsel's higher rates. 

The appeal also alleges that the trial court improperly reduced the compensable hours by 50 percent. This means that instead of recovering $105,000 in fees counsel could have gotten $210,000. But the Court of Appeals thinks the trial court had reason to do this. The trial court said this reflected excessive hours resulting from the lawyers' "utter lack of experience in either class actions or employment litigation." And, in other employment cases, lawyers put in far fewer hours than plaintiffs' lawyers did. While plaintiffs' lawyers said the comparable cases were actually incomparable because they involved single-plaintiff discrimination suits, "class actions are not categorically more complex than individual actions, and the district court appropriately considered the nature of the case as a class action lawsuit when formulating the award."