Little Rock School Dist. v. Pulaski County Special School Dist., No. 1, 93-1178
| Decision Date | 25 February 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. 93-1178,93-1178 |
| Citation | 17 F.3d 260 |
| Parties | 89 Ed. Law Rep. 757 LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT; Appellee, Anne Mitchell; Bob Moore; Pat Gee; Pat Rayburn; Mary J. Gage; North Little Rock Classroom Teachers Association; Pulaski Association of Classroom Teachers; Little Rock Classroom Teachers Association; Alexa Armstrong; Karlos Armstrong; Ed Bullington; Khayyam Davis; Janice Dent; John Harrison; Alvin Hudson; Tatia Hudson; Milton Jackson; Intervenors, Lorene Joshua; Leslie Joshua; Stacy Joshua; Wayne Joshua; Appellants, Katherine Knight; Appellee, Sara Matthews; Becky McKinney; Derrick Miles; Janice Miles; John M. Miles; NAACP; Joyce Person; Brian Taylor; Hilton Taylor; Parsha Taylor; Robert Willingham; Tonya Willingham; Intervenors, v. PULASKI COUNTY SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT, # 1; Appellee, North Little Rock School District; Leon Barnes; Sheryl Dunn; Mac Faulkner; Richard A. Giddings; Marianne Gosser; Don Hindman; Shirley Lowery; Bob Lyon; George A. McCrary; Bob Moore; Steve Morley; Buddy Raines; David Sain; Bob Stender; Dale Ward; John Ward; Judy Wear; Grainger Williams, Defendants. Philip E. Kaplan; Janet Pulliam; John Bilheimer; Movants, Office of Desegregation Monitor, Claimant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Before RICHARD S. ARNOLD, Chief Judge, HEANEY, Senior Circuit Judge, and WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.
Lorene, Leslie, Stacy, and Wayne Joshua (the Joshuas) appeal an order of the district court denying their motion for costs and attorneys fees for their activities opposing the Pulaski County Special School District's (PCSSD) proposed budget cuts and reorganization. See 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1988. The parties to this action are operating under a desegregation settlement agreement. In March 1992, PCSSD filed a Special Status Report, informing the district court that the PCSSD Board of Directors had voted to make budget cuts which would affect the settlement agreement by eliminating and combining certain instructional and administrative positions. In response, the Joshuas filed objections to PCSSD's plan to combine its Office of Desegregation with its Office of Pupil Personnel. After holding a hearing on the budget cuts, the court ordered the restoration of several instructional division positions and took the Joshuas' objections under advisement. The court later held that the Joshuas' objections were moot because PCSSD voluntarily had abandoned the Office of Desegregation reorganization (reorganization). The Joshuas then moved for an award of fees and costs with respect to the budget cuts and reorganization. The district court denied fees and costs on both issues. The Joshuas appeal, and we affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand.
The Joshuas argue that the district court abused its discretion in denying them fees after it found that the Joshuas' activities were "instrumental" in thwarting the reorganization. The Joshuas also argue that they are entitled to fees with respect to the budget cuts even though the court did not rely on the Joshuas' evidence when it concluded several aspects of the budget cuts violated the settlement agreement.
We recognize that a court's discretion in denying fees to a prevailing party under section 1988 is narrow. See Hatfield v. Hayes, 877 F.2d 717, 719 (8th Cir.1989).
Our review of the record leads us to conclude that the district court wrongly denied fees for the Joshuas' work opposing the reorganization. We conclude, however, that the Joshuas are not entitled to fees with respect to the budget cuts, although we base our decision on factors different from those considered by the district court.
Where a defendant voluntarily complies with a plaintiff's requested relief, thereby rendering the plaintiff's lawsuit moot, the plaintiff is a "prevailing party" under section 1988 if his suit is a catalyst for the defendant's voluntary compliance and the defendant's compliance was not gratuitous, meaning the plaintiff's suit was neither "frivolous, unreasonable [n]or groundless." See United Handicapped Federation v. Andre, 622 F.2d 342, 346-47 (8th Cir.1980). 1 Prevailing parties ordinarily should recover section 1988 fees unless special circumstances would make such an award unjust. Hatfield, 877 F.2d at 719.
In denying an award of fees on the reorganization, the district court agreed that the Joshuas' activity was "instrumental in reversing the proposed reorganization," but asserted that the reorganization was "not so fundamentally in violation of the goals of the settlement plan that the Court would have reversed it." To the contrary, the court "would have permitted th[e] reorganization to go forward" had it ruled on the matter.
We agree with the Joshuas that the court improperly relied on an evaluation of the underlying merits of the Joshuas' suit in denying them a fee award. Because it is abundantly clear from the record that the Joshuas' objections were not frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless, we hold that the Joshuas are prevailing parties with respect to the reorganization and are entitled to fees and costs for their work on that issue. 2
We agree with the district court that the Joshuas are not entitled to fees with respect to the budget cuts. We disagree, however, that the Joshuas cannot recover fees whenever their work duplicates monitoring activities undertaken by the Office of Desegregation Monitoring (ODM). Such a rule is far too broad. The district court stated that neither it nor the ODM "relied" or "depended" on the Joshuas' discovery, apparently because the Joshuas were providing information already discovered by ODM and the court itself. The court should not inquire whether particular testimony the Joshuas elicited at the hearing or a piece of evidence the Joshuas presented actually influenced the court's decision.
Rather, to determine whether the Joshuas were prevailing parties with respect to the budget cuts, we inquire whether the orders the district court issued after the hearing gave the Joshuas a benefit they sought in bringing suit. See Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 433, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 1939, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983) (citation omitted); see also Farrar, --- U.S. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 573 ().
As the district court recognized, the Joshuas' objections addressed only the reorganization of the Office of Desegregation and no other aspects of the budget cuts. 3 Although their objections and prayer for relief refer to PCSSD's "financial justification" for the reorganization, the Joshuas do not attack other budget cut ramifications. The Joshuas requested a hearing and discovery only on the reorganization.
The first characterization in the record of the Joshuas' objections as being related to the budget cuts appears in PCSSD's motion for additional time to respond to the objections. PCSSD stated the Joshuas' objections "embrace the entirety of the budget cuts," and it characterized the Joshuas'...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
McLaughlin by McLaughlin v. Boston School Committee, Civ. A. No. 95-11803-WAG.
... ... overreaching by plaintiff amount to a "special circumstance" within the meaning of David v ... Board of Education of Dyer County, 471 U.S. 234, 105 S.Ct. 1923, 85 L.Ed.2d 233 ... spent in this exercise often amounts to little more than documenting what a lawyer did and why ... v. Garland Independent School Dist., 489 U.S. 782, 792-93, 109 S.Ct. 1486, 1494, ... 9. See Little Rock School Dist. v. Pulaski County Special School ... ...
-
Sisneros v. Nix
... ... at 2552); see also Reed v. Woodruff County, Ark., 7 F.3d 808, 810 (8th Cir.1993). The ... result of giving, or appearing to give, special treatment to one group of prisoners, this factor ... "while acknowledging Mount Healthy City School Bd. of Educ. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 97 S.Ct ... Dist. v. Stachura, 477 U.S. 299, 305-06, 106 S.Ct ... The court places little weight in its calculation of further damages on ... ...
-
Peter by and through Peter v. Wedl
... ... , Governor, State of Minnesota, Independent School District No. 877 (Buffalo, Minnesota) and ... members include parents of children with special education needs, and religious schools and ... Little Rock v. Arkansas, 127 F.3d 693 (8th Cir. 1997); ... See also Warner v. Indep. School Dist". 625, 134 F.3d 1333 (8th Cir.1998) ... \xC2" ... Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, 502 U.S. 367, 112 S.Ct. 748, 116 L.Ed.2d ... Pulaski County, 17 F.3d 260 (8th Cir.1994). (In Kierst, ... ...
-
Friends of the Earth Inc. v Laidlaw Environmental Serv.
... ... weapons in the armory of the law can lay little claim to scientific basis." Tigner v. Texas, 310 ... challenge to constitutionality of law school admissions process mooted when plaintiff, ... Cf. Foreman v. Dallas County, 193 F.3d 314, 320 (CA5 1999) (stating, in dicta, ... Shalala, 35 F.3d 273, 276 (CA7 1994); Little Rock School Dist. v. Pulaski County Special Sch ... ...
-
Money matters: judicial market interventions creating subsidies and awarding fees and costs in individual and aggregate litigation.
...Baumgartner v. Harrisburg Hous. Auth., 21 F. 3d 541, 550 (3d Cir. 1994); Little Rock Sch. Dist. v. Pulaski County Special Sch. Dist., # 1, 17 F. 3d 260 (8th Cir. 1994). In a case in which the trial court had not determined fees, the Supreme Court noted but declined to resolve the split. See......
-
The "positive Effect" Escape Hatch: the Eleventh Circuit's New View of the Catalyst Theory and the Resulting Difficulty for Plaintiffs to Receive Attorney Fees
...Baumgartner v. Harrisburg Hous. Auth., 21 F.3d 541, 548-50 (3d Cir. 1994); Little Rock Sch. Dist. v. Pulaski Cnty. Special Sch. Dist., 17 F.3d 260, 263 n.2 (8th Cir. 1994); Craig v. Greg County, Texas, 988 F.2d 18, 20-21 (5th Cir. 1993); Paris v. U.S. Dep't of Hous. & Urban Dev., 988 F.2d 2......
-
Smith No Title
...Williams v. Hanover Hous. Auth., 113 F.3d 1294, 1299 (1st Cir. 1997); Little Rock School Dist. v. Pulaski County Special Dist. No. 1, 17 F.3d 260, 262(8th Cir. 1994). 5 Plaintiffs are deemed to be the prevailing party "if they succeed on any significant issue in litigation which achieves so......