Agster v. Maricopa County
| Decision Date | 30 March 2007 |
| Docket Number | No. CV-02-1686-PHX-JAT.,CV-02-1686-PHX-JAT. |
| Citation | 486 F.Supp.2d 1005 |
| Parties | Carol Ann AGSTER, personal representative of the Estate of Charles J. Agster, III, deceased; Charles J. Agster, Jr., and Carol Ann Agster, surviving parents of Charles J. Agster, III, Plaintiffs, v. MARICOPA COUNTY, a public entity; et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Arizona |
Michael C. Manning, Sean B. Berberian, Stinson Morrison Hecker LLP, Phoenix, AZ, for Plaintiffs.
Daniel P. Jantsch, Edward Michael Ladley, Olson Jantsch & Bakker PA, Brian Kaven, James Michael Stipe, III, John Dean Curtis, II, Burch & Cracchiolo PA, Phoenix, AZ, Richard L. Strohm, Law Offices of Richard L. Strohm PC, Scottsdale, AZ, for Defendants.
Pending before the Court are Plaintiffs' Motion for Attorneys Fees and Non-Taxable Costs (Doc. # 662) and Second Motion for Attorneys Fees (Doc. # 791), Maricopa County and the Maricopa Sheriff Defendants' Motion to Strike Second Motion for Attorneys Fees (Doc. # 796), and Defendants Maricopa County and Maricopa County Correctional Health's (MCCH's) Motion to Strike Second Motion for Attorneys Fees (Doc. # 797). The Court now rules on the motions.
On August 6, 2001, Charles Agster was brought into the Madison Street Jail by City of Phoenix police officers. Mr. Agster was taken to the Phoenix room within the jail. Defendant Lewis, who is a nurse, Was called to look at Mr. Agster. Defendant Lewis cleaned and assessed a wound over Mr. Agster's eye. Defendant Lewis then began a pre-booking assessment form while still in the Phoenix room.
The parties dispute exactly how Mr. Agster behaved while in the Phoenix room. But they do not dispute that Mr. Agster was not completely cooperative with Defendant Lewis and the officers. After a period of time in the Phoenix room, during which Mr. Agster was uncooperative, Defendant Lewis ordered the officers to place Mr. Agster in the restraint chair. Officers carried out this order and placed Mr. Agster in the restraint chair. Defendant Lewis was not present at the time the officers placed Mr. Agster in the chair.
At some point after his placement in the chair, Mr. Agster began exhibiting signs of distress. Several officers observed this distress and reported their observations to Defendant Lewis. Defendant Lewis examined Mr. Agster and ultimately determined he needed emergency medical assistance. Mr. Agster did not recover from his distress. During this entire incident, Mr. Agster had methamphetamine in his system.
The parents of Mr. Agster and Mr. Agster's Estate filed suit against Maricopa County, the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office, Sheriff Arpaio, the individual officers, Maricopa County Correctional Health Services, and Nurse Betty Lewis. On March 29, 2006, after weeks of trial, the Clerk of the Court entered judgment in the case on the jury verdicts (Doc.# 657). The jury found for Plaintiff Estate of Charles Agster, III, against all Defendants on the federal civil rights claims and awarded the Estate $6,000,000.00 in compensatory damages and $2,000,000.00 in punitive damages. The jury found for Defendants on Mr. and Mrs. Agster's federal civil rights claims. On the state claims, the jury found for Mrs. and Mr. Agster. The jury awarded $1,000,000.00 to Mrs. Agster in compensatory damages and $1,000,000.00 to Mr. Agster in compensatory damages. The amounts of the state claim verdicts were reduced by half because of comparative fault. The Court later entered an Amended Judgment (Doc. # 811) reducing the Estate's compensatory damages on the federal civil rights claims from $6,000,000.00 to $1,000,009.00.
Defendants do not dispute that Plaintiffs prevailed at trial and should recover their reasonable attorneys' fees, but Defendants object to the amount of fees requested. Defendants urge the Court to reduce the number of requested hours and lower the requested hourly rates to arrive at the lodestar amount. Defendants argue the Court then should reduce the lodestar amount by certain percentages for various reasons. Defendants also dispute the amount of non-taxable expenses claimed by Plaintiffs.
A prevailing plaintiff in a federal civil rights case should recover its attorneys' fees unless special circumstances would make an award of fees unjust. Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 429, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983). The prevailing plaintiff bears the burden of establishing entitlement to an award and must document the appropriate hours expended and hourly rates. Id. at 437, 103 S.Ct. 1933. The plaintiff should make a good faith effort to exclude excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary hours from a fee request. Id. at 434, 103 S.Ct. 1933.
The Ninth Circuit customarily uses the "lodestar" method to determine the permissible amount of attorneys' fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988. Ballen v. City of Redmond, 466 F.3d 736, 746 (9th Cir.2006). The lodestar method multiplies the number of hours the prevailing party reasonably expended on the case by a reasonable hourly rate. Id. The lodestar figure is "the presumptively accurate measure of reasonable attorneys fees." Id. The Court may adjust that figure upward or downward after considering the following factors:
(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,1 (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) the `undesirability' of the case, (11) the nature and length of the professional relationship with the client, and (12) awards in similar cases.
The Court commends Plaintiffs' counsel for doing an exemplary job on the fee application. Likewise, Defendants' counsel have done an exemplary job of presenting their objections to the, application. Defendants' counsel utilizes a very "user friendly" method of challenging the fees. They have highlighted each of the challenged time entries with one of eight colors. Each color represents a category of fees Defendants argue the Court should reject. Defendants have also proposed a total dollar amount for each category by which to reduce the fee award. Defendants' color codes, categories, and suggested dollar reductions are: (1) Yellow — Entries showing duplication of efforts = $449,255.60; (2) Blue — Entries for which not enough detail given to determine reasonableness = $356,837.00; (3) Pink — Entries indicating attorneys or paralegals performed secretarial or clerical duties = $47,144.25; (4) Green — Entries relating to other cases = $256,226.30; (5) Orange — Fees and costs related to claims upon which Plaintiffs did not prevail = $9,717.00; (6) Purple — Excessive billing = $542,152; (7) Brown — Fees associated with experts that Plaintiffs did not retain = $1,445.50; and (8) Red underlined — Catchall, including irrelevant or non-billable time (e.g. speaking with the media, soliciting charitable donations, etc.) = $65,557.00.
Defendants presumably derived these amounts by multiplying each timekeeper's allegedly unreasonable hours by the hourly rated suggested by Plaintiffs for that timekeeper, then totaling the amounts for all timekeepers in a category. Although Defendants suggest a total dollar amount for each category by which the Court should reduce the fee award, they do not furnish the basis for the calculations. Defendants' suggested reductions assume that the Court will accept Plaintiffs' proffered hourly rates. Because Defendants have not provided the total number of hours by which the Court should reduce each timekeeper's entries per category, the Court does not have the data to do a simple recalculation if the Court does not accept Plaintiffs' suggested hourly rates. Without the hourly data, the Court would have to: (1) determine which particular time entries were inappropriate; (2) total those according to color code; (3) make a subtotal according to timekeeper in each category; (4) apply the Court's prevailing rate per timekeeper to all unreasonable entries; and (5) subtract the product from the fee award. For reasons that will follow, this is not practical.
Plaintiffs' first motion for fees alone has 478 pages of time entries, averaging 30 entries per page, for an estimated total of 14,340 time entries. Defendants have challenged approximately one-third of these entries, or an estimated total of 4,780. If each entry received a minute of the Court's attention, it would take 80 hours — two solid work weeks — just to review the time entries. This two-week period does not contemplate time spent comparing the entries to work of other timekeepers, comparing entries to issues in the case, and doing the various necessary calculations.
Although Defendants have criticized Plaintiffs for billing too much time to this case, Defendants have not suggested what amount of hours would have been reasonable. Defendants suggest that the Court can discount an entire time entry if a timekeeping error or slight duplication exists in the entry. The Court disagrees. So, while Defendants have expended great effort in discounting Plaintiffs' claims, the Court is still left with, not an impossible task, but an unrealistic one.
The amount of time an entry-by-entry analysis would exact from finite judicial resources is substantial and out of proportion to the end, to be achieved. See Gates v. Deukmejian, 987 F.2d 1392, 1399 (9th Cir.1992) (...
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