2d Circuit upholds 70% reduction in attorneys' fees in successful civil rights case

A second round of litigation follows any jury verdict in a civil rights case. The plaintiff will file a motion to recover attorneys' fees from the losing party. This motion practice is not supposed to become a second major litigation, but sometimes it does, as the parties fight over the prevailing attorney's hourly rate and whether they spent too much time on the case. That happened in this case. 

The case is McDevitt v. County of Suffolk, a summary order issued on August 5. This police misconduct case yielded a jury verdict in the amount of $750,000, later reduced to $233,000. Plaintiff's counsel next sought nearly $800,000 in attorneys' fees, but the trial court only awarded $187,270, a steep reduction. Hence this appeal, relating solely to the attorneys' fees issue.

The reduction in attorneys' fees may seem excessive -- the trial reduced the amount by 70% -- but the Court of Appeals (Chin, Sullivan and Vacca [D.J.]) affirms. What you need to know is that the Court of Appeals rarely alters the district court's attorneys' fees rulings, which are reviewed under an abuse of discretion test. That test is deferential to the lower court, but the Supreme Court has said that appellate courts must be especially deferential to lower court attorneys' fees rulings on the basis that the trial court -- which presided over discovery and trial and motion practice -- is in a much better position to determine if the requested fees are too high, if trial court's claimed hourly rate is excessive, and whether any equitable considerations warrant a reduction in the fee award. The Court of Appeals does not have that intimate perspective on how the case proceeded below. That's why these appeals usually fail.

Here, plaintiff argued that the trial court unfairly reduced his hourly rate. Counsel requested $367.00 per hour but the district court assessed him at $300.00 per hour. Plaintiff's counsel arrived at the $367.00 amount by blending different hourly rates based on the tasks he was performing: $750 per hour for partner-level work, $450 for associate-level work, and $250 for paralegal work. But the Court of Appeals has never authorized such a calculation in setting an attorney's hourly rate, the Second Circuit holds. The better approach is to set your requested hourly rate at the attorney level and then seek a lower rate for tasks that a paralegal would normally do. In any event, hourly rates in the EDNY range from $300 to $450 for partner-level work. One judge in the EDNY last year raised the cap to $650 for partners, owing to inflation. The rate set by the district court in this case -- $300 per hour -- falls within the reasonable range, though at the lower end. That calculation is not an abuse of discretion.

What about the 70% reduction in hours? That was not an abuse of discretion, either, the Court of Appeals says. The reason is that plaintiff only prevailed on a few claims: excessive force and malicious prosecution against individual police officers and municipal liability against the County of Suffolk, though the latter claim yielded no damages. All of plaintiff's other claims failed. Under the Supreme Court's standards, courts may consider the overall degree of success in determining whether to modify the overall reduction. Altering the percentage reduction is not easy, even if the successful claim resulted in a large damages award. As plaintiff prevailed on only one of five federal claims in this case, against 12 police officers and two municipal entities, winning damages on only one claim, the Court of Appeals will not modify the reduction. On top of that, the trial court identified excessive and/or unnecessary billing entries, as well as vague time entries, which also warranted a reduction in attorneys' fees.

The Court of Appeals reassures us that a 70% reduction is not unheard of in the Second Circuit:

As for the 70% figure the district court settled on – which is an admittedly steep reduction – we note that such deductions are by no means unusual in this Circuit. For example, we affirmed a 50% across-the-board deduction in Matusick v. Erie County, 757 F.3d 31, 64 (2d Cir. 2014), due to a “lack of detail in the billing records” alone; a series of 50% deductions in In re Agent Orange Product Liability Litigation, 818 F.2d 226, 238 (2d Cir. 1987), due to “voluminous” billings on quasi-administrative items and travel time; and an 80% across-the-board deduction in Guardians Ass’n of Police Department of New York City v. City of New York, due to “facially excessive” hours and “vague[]” time records, 133 F. App’x 785, 786 (2d Cir. 2005). At the district level, courts in the Circuit also routinely apply deductions of 70% or more for suits with similar records of success and comparable billing defects.