-
USCA1 Opinion
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT
_________________________
No. 97-1128
DENISE COUTIN, ET AL.,
Plaintiffs, Appellants,
v.
YOUNG & RUBICAM PUERTO RICO, INC.,
Defendant, Appellee.
_________________________
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Salvador E. Casellas, U.S. District Judge] ___________________
_________________________
Before
Selya, Circuit Judge, _____________
Gibson,* Senior Circuit Judge, ____________________
and Lynch, Circuit Judge. _____________
_________________________
Jorge Miguel Suro Ballester for appellants. ___________________________
Etienne Totti Del Valle, with whom Totti & Rodriguez Diaz ________________________ _______________________
was on brief, for appellee.
_________________________
September 8, 1997
_________________________
_______________
*Hon. John R. Gibson, of the Eighth Circuit, sitting by
designation.
SELYA, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff-appellant Denise SELYA, Circuit Judge. ______________
Coutin,1 flush with victory after winning an employment
discrimination suit, encountered disappointment when the district
court awarded her only a fraction of the attorneys' fees to which
she believed herself entitled under the Fees Act, 42 U.S.C.
1988 (1994). Coutin appeals. Because the district court
employed a flawed methodology and relied on impermissible
criteria, we vacate its order and remand for further proceedings.
I. BACKGROUND I. BACKGROUND
On December 30, 1993, the appellant sued her former
employer, defendant-appellee Young & Rubicam of Puerto Rico, Inc.
(Y&R), an advertising agency, for over $1,500,000 in compensatory
and punitive damages. Her complaint advanced one substantive
federal claim: that Y&R had violated Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e to 2000e-17 (1994),
including the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, 42 U.S.C. 2000e(k)
(1994), by (1) assigning Coutin (who was then pregnant) to tasks
that were detrimental to her physical and emotional health, (2)
requiring her to work under unsafe conditions, (3) condoning (or,
at least, neglecting to curb) her coworkers' disparaging comments
about her gravidity, and (4) constructively discharging her. The
complaint also included several claims under local law, the
elements of which were subsumed, without exception, under the
____________________
1Coutin's spouse and their conjugal partnership are also
plaintiffs and appellants in this litigation. Because their
rights derive from Coutin's, we opt for simplicity and treat the
appeal as if Coutin were the sole plaintiff and appellant.
2
broader federal claim.
Y&R denied Coutin's allegations and defended the suit
with considerable vigor. Along the way, the parties attempted to
reach an accord, but they came no closer than a demand of
$150,000 as against an offer of $15,000. At trial, the appellant
(who had secured and retained other employment) offered no
evidence of lost income, and that aspect of her original claim
was pretermitted. The case went to the jury, which found that
Y&R had intentionally discriminated against, and constructively
discharged, the appellant, thus violating both federal and Puerto
Rico law. The jury awarded the appellant and her spouse a total
of $44,000 in compensatory damages, plus an additional $1,538 in
severance pay under Law 80, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 29, 185a
(1985). The jury rejected the appellant's prayer for punitive
damages.
Y&R, which had moved unsuccessfully for judgment as a
matter of law on several occasions during the trial, renewed that
motion and asked alternatively for a new trial. See Fed. R. Civ. ___
P. 50, 59. The district court refused relief. In turn, the
appellant petitioned under 42 U.S.C. 1988 for an award of
$52,793.75 in counsel fees and related expenses. The fee
application contained a sworn statement delineating her lawyer's
two decades of experience in personal injury, labor, and
discrimination cases, as well as extensive, contemporaneous
billing records that detailed the lawyer's work over four
calendar years. At the bottom line, the reckoning reflected out-
3
of-court time (250.25 hours) billed at $175 per hour and in-court
time (45 hours) billed at $200 per hour.
Despite this meticulous proffer, the judge eschewed any
discussion of either the hours spent or the billing rates
assigned and instead awarded the appellant a mere $5,000 in fees.
The judge purported to base his decision entirely on the
"plaintiffs' limited success on their claims, the plaintiffs'
willingness to go to trial despite the defendant's earnest
efforts to settle the case for a reasonable sum, and the equities
involved."2 This appeal ensued.
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
We review fee awards deferentially, according
substantial respect to the trial court's informed discretion.
See Brewster v. Dukakis, 3 F.3d 488, 492 (1st Cir. 1993). We ___ ________ _______
will disturb such an award only for mistake of law or abuse of
discretion. See United States v. Metropolitan Dist. Comm'n, 847 ___ _____________ _________________________
F.2d 12, 14 (1st Cir. 1988). In this regard, an abuse of
discretion occurs "when a material factor deserving significant
weight is ignored, when an improper factor is relied upon, or
when all proper and no improper factors are assessed, but the
____________________
2While the court did not elaborate upon the phrase "equities
involved," it is apparently a euphemism for the judge's view that
the appellant had been fortunate to secure a verdict, and that a
large fee award therefore "would constitute an intolerable
windfall." We proceed on the assumption that this is what the
judge meant. In all events, if the judge was referring to
"equities" in a broader sense, those equities, to the extent that
they bear on attorney compensation, are encompassed within the
standard fee-adjustment factors. See infra note 3 and ___ _____
accompanying text.
4
court makes a serious mistake in weighing them." Foster v. Mydas ______ _____
Assocs., Inc., 943 F.2d 139, 143 (1st Cir. 1991) (internal _____________
quotation marks and citation omitted).
Although our analytical posture is respectful, we
nonetheless must engage the district court's decision critically.
To facilitate this perlustration, we require the lower court to
explain its actions. See id. at 141. The explanation need not ___ ___
be painstaking, and, sometimes, it may even appear by
implication, but at a bare minimum, the order awarding fees, read
against the backdrop of the record as a whole, must expose the
district court's thought process and show the method and manner
underlying its decisional calculus. See Blum v. Stenson, 465 ___ ____ _______
U.S. 886, 898 (1984); Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 437 _______ _________
(1983).
This principle is especially important when the fee
award departs substantially from the contours shaped by the
application. "As a general rule, a fee-awarding court that makes
a substantial reduction in either documented time or
authenticated rates should offer reasonably explicit findings,
for the court, in such circumstances, `has a burden to spell out
the whys and wherefores.'" Brewster, 3 F.3d at 493 (quoting ________
Metropolitan Dist. Comm'n, 847 F.2d at 18)). An appellate court _________________________
deprived of meaningful insight into the trial court's thinking
frequently will be unable to conduct an adequate review of a
significantly adjusted fee award, and thus will be compelled to
remand for further findings. See, e.g., Riley v. City of ___ ____ _____ ________
5
Jackson, 99 F.3d 757, 760 (5th Cir. 1996); Freeman v. Franzen, _______ _______ _______
695 F.2d 485, 494 (7th Cir. 1982).
III. METHODOLOGY III. METHODOLOGY
The lodestar method is the strongly preferred method
by which district courts should determine what fees to award
prevailing parties in actions that fall within the ambit of
section 1988. See Lipsett v. Blanco, 975 F.2d 934, 937 (1st Cir. ___ _______ ______
1992). This approach contemplates judicial ascertainment of "the
number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation multiplied
by a reasonable hourly rate" as the starting point in
constructing a fee award. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 433. While the _______
lodestar method is a tool, not a straitjacket as we have
acknowledged, some deviation from an orthodox application of the
method is permissible in highly unusual situations, see ___
Metropolitan Dist. Comm'n, 847 F.2d at 15-16 a fee-awarding _________________________
court shuns this tried-and-true approach at its peril. See Segal ___ _____
v. Gilbert Color Sys., Inc., 746 F.2d 78, 87 (1st Cir. 1984). As ________________________
we have said, the lodestar method is a tool, but it is not merely
a tool. The method is also a device which enables courts to pay
homage to the fundamental reason that Congress passed the Fees
Act: its resolve that certain types of wrongs, such as
discrimination on account of sex, should not be countenanced, and
that private suits aimed at redeeming such abuses should be
encouraged. See City of Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561, 574- ___ _________________ ______
75 (1986) (plurality opinion).
To say that a trial court mulling a fee request
6
ordinarily must fashion a lodestar is not to say that the court
is in thrall to an attorney's time records. The court can
segregate time spent on certain unsuccessful claims, see, e.g., ___ ____
Hensley, 461 U.S. at 435, eliminate excessive or unproductive _______
hours, see, e.g., Lipsett, 975 F.2d at 937, and assign more ___ ____ _______
realistic rates to time spent, see, e.g., Brewster, 3 F.3d at ___ ____ ________
492. In these and other ways, the trial court, though adhering
to the time-and-rate-based method of fee calculation, may fashion
a lodestar which differs substantially from the fee requested by
the prevailing party. Moreover, the trial court retains the
authority to adjust the lodestar after initially computing it
but it must do so in accordance with accepted principles. See ___
Hensley, 461 U.S. at 429-31 (citing the legislative history of _______
the Fees Act and observing that it is appropriate to adjust fees
in accordance with the twelve factors set forth in Johnson v. _______
Georgia Highway Express, Inc., 488 F.2d 714, 717-19 (5th Cir. ______________________________
1974)).3
IV. ANALYSIS IV. ANALYSIS
In this instance, Coutin submitted the documentation
____________________
3This circuit has embraced the Johnson factors for use in _______
sculpting fee awards. See, e.g., Segal, 746 F.2d at 86. These ___ ____ _____
factors are: (1) the time and labor required; (2) the novelty
and difficulty of the questions; (3) the skill requisite to
perform the legal services properly; (4) the preclusion of other
employment by the attorney(s) due to acceptance of the case; (5)
the customary fee; (6) the nature of the fee (fixed or
contingent); (7) the 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
attorney(s); (10) the "undesirability" of the case; (11) the
nature and length of the professional relationship with the
client; and (12) the size of awards in similar cases.
7
needed to permit the district court to follow the conventional
approach, but the court scarcely mentioned that proffer and, in
all events, did not engage in any lodestar analysis whatever.
While such a departure from preferred practice will not
necessarily be fatal, spurning all consideration of a lodestar
places a substantial burden upon the district court to account
for its actions. See Berg v. Gackenbach, 966 F.2d 731, 732 (2d ___ ____ __________
Cir. 1992); Metropolitan Dist. Comm'n, 847 F.2d at 12, 15. _________________________
Here, the district court did not cite any reason for
abjuring the lodestar method. Still, the court did make an
effort to explain its decisionmaking process, indicating that it
had premised its decision on three factors: the appellant's
limited success, the parties' abortive efforts to settle the
case, and the equities of the situation. But the court's
reliance on the first of these factors is at best insufficiently
explained, and its reliance on the other two factors is plainly
wrong. Moreover, none of these factors justifies the court's
failure to compute (and then adjust, if necessary) a lodestar.
A. Limited Success. A. Limited Success. _______________
The district court's conclusion that the appellant
enjoyed only "limited success" (and, thus, deserved less in the
way of counsel fees) is too much of a stretch. To be sure, as
the court pointed out, there was a chasmal gulf between the
damages requested in the complaint and the damages awarded.4 The
____________________
4In making this comparison, the court emphasized the ad
damnum. The use of the ad damnum for this purpose is suspect
because the ad damnum is an inherently artificial construct. See ___
8
court had a right to keep this discrepancy in mind, but it cannot
amount to more than one element in the constellation of factors
that the court considers when determining the quality of the
results obtained. Because this phenomenon is sometimes
misunderstood, we take some pains to explain it.
As Judge Casellas correctly noted, the Supreme Court
has identified results obtained as a preeminent consideration in
the fee-adjustment process. See Hensley, 461 U.S. at 432, 440. ___ _______
But the term "results obtained" has a variety of meanings. It
can refer to a plaintiff's success claim by claim, or to the
relief actually achieved, or to the societal importance of the
right which has been vindicated, or to all of these measures in
combination. We think that the last meaning is the best choice,
and that, as a consequence, all three types of "results"
potentially bear upon the amount of an ensuing fee award. See ___
generally Norman v. Housing Auth. of Montgomery, 836 F.2d 1292, _________ ______ ___________________________
1302 (11th Cir. 1988).
Although all three measures of success must be factored
into the fee-reduction calculus, they do not lend themselves to
identical treatment. On the one hand, to the extent that fee
adjustments are intended to reflect the success or failure of
severable claims, they are relatively easy to calculate because,
although some overlap may muddy the waters, a court usually can
____________________
Aggarwal v. Ponce Sch. of Med., 745 F.2d 723, 729 (1st Cir. 1984) ________ __________________
(observing that "[m]odern litigation practices being what they
are, the monetary demand which caps a plaintiff's complaint is
likely to be sanguine at best").
9
determine the extent to which a plaintiff has prevailed on her
claims merely by perusing the docket (e.g., the complaint, the
verdict form, etc.), and can then filter out time spent on
unsuccessful claims. See, e.g., Lipsett, 975 F.2d at 940-41. On ___ ____ _______
the other hand, a fee reduction in response to a scanty damage
award or a shortfall in other relief entails a subjective
evaluation of damages awarded and nonmonetary relief obtained,
and is substantially more difficult to quantify.5 Seen in this
light, the computational principles applicable to claims-based
fee reductions are relatively simple and straightforward, whereas
the computational principles applicable to relief-based fee
reductions are highly ramified and, in some respects, operate at
cross purposes. To visualize how these sometimes competing
principles may affect a district court's effort to determine a
"reasonable" fee, it may be helpful to catalog the several
possible configurations in which the issue may arise.
1. If a plaintiff prevails on only some of multiple 1.
claims, then a fee reduction may be in order. To guide
decisionmaking in this situation, the Justices have suggested two
relevant questions: "First, did the plaintiff fail to prevail on
claims that were unrelated to the claims on which he succeeded?
Second, did the plaintiff achieve a level of success that makes
the hours reasonably expended a satisfactory basis for making a
fee award?" Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434. _______
____________________
5This is equally true of the vindication of rights (which,
to the extent it may be relevant here, plainly cuts against a
reduction in fees).
10
When different claims for relief are not interconnected
that is, when the claims rest on different facts and legal
theories they are by definition severable and unrelated.
Attorneys' fees normally should not be awarded for time spent in
litigating (or preparing to litigate) unsuccessful, severable
claims. See id. at 435; Lipsett, 975 F.2d at 940. ___ ___ _______
2. If a plaintiff prevails on an insubstantial subset 2.
of her interrelated claims and obtains only limited relief, the
trial court has discretion to shrink fees to reflect that
inferior result. See Hensley, 461 U.S. at 436; Andrade v. ___ _______ _______
Jamestown Hous. Auth., 82 F.3d 1179, 1191 (1st Cir. 1996). ______________________
Withal, a plaintiff who has limited success from a claim-by-claim
standpoint, but who nevertheless obtains substantial compensation
or other important relief, usually will fare much better in the
fee wars, even though some of her claims failed. See, e.g., ___ ____
Hensley, 461 U.S. at 440 ("Where a lawsuit consists of related _______
claims, a plaintiff who has won substantial relief should not
have his attorney's fee reduced simply because the district court
did not adopt each contention raised.").
3. If a prevailing party is successful on all (or 3.
substantially all) of her claims, and receives complete (or near-
complete) relief, it goes without saying that reasonable fees
should be paid for time productively spent, without any discount
for limited success.
4. If a prevailing party succeeds on all (or 4.
substantially all) of her claims, but receives no significant
11
relief (e.g., the jury awards only nominal damages), the trial
judge sometimes may deny fees altogether because this scenario
often "highlights the plaintiff's failure to prove actual,
compensable injury." Farrar v. Hobby, 506 U.S. 103, 115 (1992) ______ _____
(denying fees in a case in which the plaintiff sought $17,000,000
in damages and received $1); see also id. at 114 (affirming that ___ ____ ___
"the `technical' nature of a nominal damages award or any other
judgment . . . does bear on the propriety of fees awarded under
1988"). Farrar, then, signifies that fees need not be bestowed ______
if the plaintiff's apparent victory is "purely technical or de __
minimis." Id. at 117 (O'Connor, J., concurring).6 _______ ___
5. Sometimes, the plaintiff will prevail on all her 5.
claims, but will receive limited (though not insubstantial)
redress. In such circumstances, it is appropriate for a trial
court to consider the skimpiness of the relief when adjusting the
lodestar figure. See Rivera, 477 U.S. at 574. But though a ___ ______
meager damage award may be taken into consideration, the Court
has squarely disclaimed "the proposition that fee awards under
1988 should necessarily be proportionate to the amount of damages
a civil rights plaintiff actually recovers." Id. (approving ___
$245,456.25 in fees in a section 1983 action that resulted in a
____________________
6Be that as it may, obtaining only nominal damages does not
negate the possibility of a fee award. For example, if the
plaintiff receives another form of meaningful relief, then the
"results obtained" may be substantial, notwithstanding the
plaintiff's failure to collect compensatory damages. See ___
O'Connor v. Huard, 117 F.3d 12, 17-18 (1st Cir. 1997) (affirming ________ _____
a substantial attorneys' fee award in a section 1983 action in
which the plaintiff received nominal damages and injunctive ___
relief).
12
judgment for $33,350); see also id. at 585 (Powell, J., ___ ____ ___
concurring) (noting that "[n]either the decisions of this Court
nor the legislative history of 1988" lend credence to a "rule
of proportionality between the fee awarded and the damages
recovered in a civil rights case"); Foley v. City of Lowell, 948 _____ ______________
F.2d 10, 19 (1st Cir. 1991) (holding that although a trial court
is "entitled to take into account the relative size of the damage
award and the fee award," the former "does not constitute a
dispositive criterion, or even a ceiling" on the latter).
It is readily apparent that some tension exists between
these principles: while a judge may not automatically reduce a
fee award in proportion to a judgment that is significantly less
than the plaintiff sought, the judge can take that small judgment
into reasonable account in massaging the lodestar. This
dissonance makes it all the more crucial that a nisi prius court
provide a clear explanation when limited relief furnishes the
ostensible justification for a departure from the lodestar.
Conscious of these differing configurations, we turn to
the case at hand. The focus of our inquiry is the lower court's
determination that the appellant's success was limited (and,
thus, justified a fee reduction).
We start by scrutinizing claims-based success. Y&R
asserts that Coutin's victory was less than complete both because
the jury declined to grant punitive damages and because the
appellant did not pursue her original prayer for lost income. We
believe that this riposte blurs the distinction between claims
13
and damages. In the fee-shifting context, a "claim" is an
allegation of a legal injury comprised of various elements and
equivalent to a cause of action, whereas "damages" are the
compensation awarded to the plaintiff who has suffered a legal
wrong and who therefore has a valid claim against the defendant.
In this case, punitive damages and loss of income (no matter how
they are denominated in the complaint) are not failed claims, but
are categories of relief that the jury and the appellant's
subsequent employment history, respectively, have denied her.
We need not linger. From a claim-by-claim standpoint,
the appellant prevailed up and down the line. She triumphed on
every substantive claim asserted under both federal and Puerto
Rico law. In so doing, she achieved a 100% success rate and
complete success is hardly "limited." Consequently, a claims-
based, results-obtained fee reduction is wholly inappropriate.
From the standpoint of relief obtained, the situation
is more ambiguous. After all, it remains within the district
court's discretion to reduce a fee award in response to limited
relief even in the presence of complete claims-based success.
See, e.g., Cartwright v. Stamper, 7 F.3d 106, 109-10 (7th Cir. ___ ____ __________ _______
1993) (declining to award fees where plaintiff succeeded on all
claims, but received only nominal damages for each). Here,
however, the damage award is substantial in absolute terms over
$45,000 and equals roughly three times the appellant's annual
salary. On its face, such relief does not seem "limited" in any
relevant sense.
14
Moreover, to the extent if at all that the ratio of
the damages requested to the judgment received may be taken into
account in fixing an appropriate award, see Foley, 948 F.2d at ___ _____
19-20 ("Often, when the amount sought is large but the actual
recovery is small, fees may be reduced somewhat."); see also ___ ____
Loggins v. Delo, 999 F.2d 364, 369 (8th Cir. 1993), this _______ ____
proportion may be used only as one facet of the trial court's
determination of the quality of the results obtained. The court
may not employ the derived ratio as an independent justification
for a fee reduction. See Rivera, 477 U.S. at 574. Rather, in ___ ______
the absence of special circumstances, the court must evaluate the
data submitted by the fee-seeker, compute a lodestar, consider
the totality of the adjustment factors approved by Congress and
the Court, see supra note 3, and make specific, reasoned ___ _____
adjustments if it is to arrive at a reduced fee award.
In the instant case, the court did not analyze the
appellant's time-and-rate data; it ignored the appellant's broad
claims-based success; and it failed to explain why the sum upon
which it settled $5,000 was itself reasonable in relation to
counsel's efforts, even given a perceived shortfall in the relief
received. Thus, the more than 90% fee reduction that the court
imposed cannot be justified on the basis of limited success.7
____________________
7The district court's reliance on Andrade (a case in which _______
the trial judge ordered, and this court approved, a reduction in
fees from $26,487.50 to $2,500) is misplaced. There, the
plaintiffs obtained limited claims-based success and limited ___
relief. See Andrade, 82 F.3d at 1191. In contrast, Coutin ___ _______
obtained substantial claims-based success and rather substantial
relief. Hence, Andrade and this case are not fair congeners. _______
15
B. Settlement Prospects. B. Settlement Prospects. ____________________
In other instances, inquiry into the course of
settlement negotiations may yield information that is useful in
determining fees. See Marek v. Chesny, 473 U.S. 1, 11-12 (1985) ___ _____ ______
(applying Fed. R. Civ. P. 68 in a civil rights context). In the
case at bar, however, the defendant did not invoke Rule 68 and,
in any event, the judgment that the plaintiff obtained more than
trebled the highest settlement offer available to her. This
success validates the appellant's rejection of the tendered
settlement and immunizes her from detrimental consequences based
upon that rejection. See Corder v. Gates, 947 F.2d 374, 380-81 ___ ______ _____
(9th Cir. 1991).
Policy considerations militate strongly against
relaxing this rule. Permitting a district court to reduce a fee
award for failure to settle when the eventual judgment exceeds
the best settlement offer previously made by the losing party
would put too large a club in the district court's hands. In the
bargain, endorsing that praxis would create inordinate pressure
on plaintiffs to accept low settlement offers. This result would
inhibit the bringing of civil rights actions, and, in the end,
frustrate Congress's manifest intention that the Fees Act
facilitate the prosecution of private actions aimed at deterring
civil rights abuses. See Rivera, 477 U.S. at 574-75. We ___ ______
therefore hold that it is a mistake of law to reduce an award of
attorneys' fees in a civil rights case in response to a
plaintiff's rejection of a defendant's settlement offer when the
16
subsequent judgment exceeds that offer.8
C. Windfall. C. Windfall. ________
The district court's opinion suggests that a fee
reduction is appropriate because the appellant had a shaky case
and did not deserve to prevail on the merits. See supra note 2. ___ _____
Wholly apart from the accuracy vel non of the district court's ___ ___
assessment, this criterion is not a proper element of the fee-
award calculus.
Congress intended the Fees Act to effect attorney
compensation in virtually all cases involving successful civil
rights claims.9 See generally S. Rep. No. 94-1011 (1976), ___ _________
reprinted in 1976 U.S.C.C.A.N. 5908; see also Williams v. Hanover _________ __ ___ ____ ________ _______
Hous. Auth., 113 F.3d 1294, 1300 (1st Cir. 1997). After a jury's ___________
verdict has been rendered and has withstood whatever barrage of
post-trial motions may ensue, the time for debate has expired.
It is an abuse of discretion for the trial court thereafter to
vent its skepticism about the claimant's right to recover by
reducing the fee award to which the prevailing party is entitled.
See Stefan v. Laurenitis, 889 F.2d 363, 370-71 (1st Cir. 1989) ___ ______ __________
____________________
8This case does not present the somewhat different question
of whether a fee award in a civil rights action might be subject
to reduction, apart from Rule 68, because the prevailing
plaintiff received a damage award which was less than the
defendant had offered in settlement. We leave that question for
another day.
9Despite this policy interest, we have determined that
counsel fees may be withheld altogether if special circumstances
exist. See Domegan v. Ponte, 972 F.2d 401, 419 (1st Cir. 1992); ___ _______ _____
Lewis v. Kendrick, 944 F.2d 949, 957-58 (1st Cir. 1991). Such _____ ________
circumstances are rare. They are not present here.
17
(refusing to allow district courts to balance equities of this
sort when considering whether to award attorneys' fees under
section 1988); see also DeJesus v. Banco Popular, 918 F.2d 232, ___ ____ _______ _____________
235 (1st Cir. 1990). In other words, the time for a trial judge
to express his doubts about the viability of a claim occurs when
the judge rules upon the full panoply of motions for judgment as
a matter of law and/or for a new trial. Once a case has scaled
those barriers and this case has trimming attorneys' fees
cannot be employed as a palliative to assuage lingering doubts
about the legal viability of the claim. See DeJesus, 918 F.2d at ___ _______
235. Indeed, if a plaintiff has a thin case but nonetheless
manages, as here, to secure a verdict for three times the largest
settlement offer, such a template suggests skillful advocacy,
perhaps worthy of an award of full fees.
D. Local Law. D. Local Law. _________
Wholly apart from the district court's rationale, Y&R
has a fallback position. It posits that, whatever the
infirmities of the $5,000 fee award under federal law, the award
comports with Puerto Rico law and should be sustained on that
basis. This thesis, which proposes that Puerto Rico law should
govern in respect to fees because the appellant prevailed on her
non-federal claims and recovered double damages by operation of
Puerto Rico law, fails for two reasons.
First, under section 1988 "the plaintiff is entitled to
fees for hours worked not only on the successful civil rights
claims, but also on other claims involving a `common core of
18
facts' or `related legal theories,'" and, therefore, a "plaintiff
should receive significant fees when he has won a partial victory _______
on a civil rights claim while receiving substantially the relief
he there sought, though the jury awards it on a factually or
legally related pendent state claim." Aubin v. Fudala, 782 F.2d _____ ______
287, 291 (1st Cir. 1986) (quoting Hensley, 461 U.S. at 435).10 _______
Here, where the elements of the various claims under Puerto Rico
law are subsumed by the Title VII claim, the claims are
unquestionably interrelated. Hence, the fact that the appellant
also recovered under Puerto Rico law is irrelevant vis- -vis her
section 1988 recovery.
Second, as a general matter, a plaintiff who prevails
on congruent federal and state claims and qualifies for fee-
shifting under two or more statutes may recover fees under
whichever fee-shifting regime she chooses. See Freeman v. ___ _______
Package Mach. Co., 865 F.2d 1331, 1347 (1st Cir. 1988). To ___________________
constrain the plaintiff's choice would withhold from her the
deserved fruits of her victory and would discourage potential
claimants from redeeming their civil rights.
V. CONCLUSION V. CONCLUSION
We need go no further. The court below offered no
plausible reason for eschewing the lodestar method, and no such
____________________
10In Aubin, the plaintiff prevailed on interrelated federal _____
and state claims, recovering $501 on the former and $300,000 on
the latter. 782 F.2d at 288. The district court reduced the
requested attorneys' fees on a theory much like that advanced by
Y&R. See id. at 290. We overturned that ruling. See id. at ___ ___ ___ ___
292.
19
reason springs spontaneously from the record. It was, therefore,
error to forgo the lodestar. In addition, the court relied on
impermissible criteria in making its non-lodestar fee award.
Consequently, we vacate the order appealed from and remand for
further proceedings consistent with this opinion. Costs on
appeal shall be taxed in favor of the appellant. Upon the timely
filing of a supplemental application in suitable form, the
district court shall include in its new fee award a sum
sufficient to compensate the appellant's counsel for services
rendered in connection with the successful prosecution of this
appeal.
It is so ordered. It is so ordered. ________________
20
Document Info
Docket Number： 97-1128
Filed Date： 9/9/1997
Precedential Status： Precedential
Modified Date： 9/21/2015