Palmer v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 18 November 1983
• Docket Number: No. 82 C 2349.,82 C 2349.
• Citation: 576 F. Supp. 252
• Parties: Reuben PALMER, et al., Subclass A Plaintiffs, and Edward Negron, et al., Subclass B Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

576 F. Supp. 252

Reuben PALMER, et al., Subclass A Plaintiffs and Edward Negron, et al., Subclass B Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.

No. 82 C 2349.

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, E.D.

November 18, 1983.

Michael Deutsch, Jeffrey Haas, Dennis Cunningham, and G. Flint Taylor, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiffs.

Robert Fioretti, Chicago Corp. Counsel, Henry A. Hauser, Cook Co., Asst. State's Atty., Jeremiah Marsh and Wm. Carlisle Herbert, Hopkins & Sutter, Chicago, Ill., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

SHADUR, District Judge.

In the latest chapter of this "Chicago Street Files" case, plaintiffs move under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 ("Section 1988") for entry of an interim award of attorneys' fees and expenses against defendants.¹ Because (1) plaintiffs qualify as "prevailing" under Section 1988 regardless of the outcome of the pending appeal² and (2) an interim fee award is appropriate in light of principles recently announced in Hensley v. Eckerhart, ___ U.S. ___, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983), this Court awards interim attorneys' fees for plaintiffs' counsel's already-successful efforts that by definition cannot be negated on appeal.

Jurisdiction

County Defendants challenge this Court's jurisdiction to consider the fees issue. That argument is not even specious — certainly not in this Circuit, and likely not in any federal court anywhere. Even in the situation in which a district court has rendered a final judgment — the classic situation in which an appeal from that judgment is viewed as ousting the district court of jurisdiction to do anything further — the specific teaching of our Court of Appeals is exactly to the contrary as to attorneys' fees awards in civil rights cases. That subject was discussed at length by the Court "in the exercise of our supervisory powers" (623 F.2d at 29) in Terket v. Lund, 623 F.2d 29, 33-34 (7th Cir.1980). After an extended analysis of the policy considerations involved, the Court concluded (id. at 34):

In sum, we believe the rule in Wright v. Jackson, 522 F.2d 955 (4th Cir.1975) is more likely to cause delay and wasted effort than prevent it. Therefore, district courts in this circuit should proceed with attorneys' fees motions, even after an appeal is filed, as expeditiously as possible. Any party dissatisfied with the court's ruling may then file an appeal and apply to this court for consolidation with the pending appeal of the merits.

Since that time the Terket rule, allowing (indeed directing) the award of attorneys' fees after an appeal has been taken, has been approved implicitly by the Supreme Court. White v. New Hampshire Department of Employment Security, 455 U.S. 445, 452-53 n. 14, 454, 102 S.Ct. 1162, 1166-67 n. 14, 1168, 71 L.Ed.2d 325 (1982). White was relied on for precisely that proposition by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit only last month in Masalosalo v. Stonewall Insurance Co., 718 F.2d 955 (9th Cir.1983), specifically rejecting Wright and electing to follow Terket and the Eighth Circuit's like ruling in Obin v. District No. 9 of the IAM, 651 F.2d 574 (8th Cir.1981).

This Court would — in accordance with the Terket directive from our Court of Appeals — thus have jurisdiction to consider and rule on plaintiffs' fees motion even had it rendered a final judgment from which an appeal was taken. It perforce has such jurisdiction a fortiori where the appeal is only interlocutory, a situation in which the concept of ouster of the district court's further jurisdiction is far more limited. It is really untenable for County Defendants to argue from older Seventh Circuit law, decided in a wholly different context, that this Court lacks the power our Court of Appeals has squarely and expressly confirmed.³

"Prevailing Party" Status

Section 1988 permits courts to award attorneys' fees to "the prevailing party" in federal civil rights actions. "Prevailing" is defined broadly, and Maher v. Gagne, 448 U.S. 122, 129, 100 S.Ct. 2570, 2574, 65 L.Ed.2d 653 (1980) confirms (in accordance with the Senate Report in enacting Section 1988) a plaintiff can prevail "without formally obtaining relief." Relief need not be substantial but may even provide only a "moral vindication" of the correctness of plaintiff's position. Knighton v. Watkins, 616 F.2d 795, 799 (5th Cir. 1980). When the relief obtained is not formal, "the plaintiffs' lawsuit must be causally linked to the achievement of the relief obtained" and "the defendant must not have acted wholly gratuitously, i.e., the plaintiffs' claims, if pressed, cannot have been frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless." Harrington v. DeVito, 656 F.2d 264, 266-67 (7th Cir.1981).

Plaintiffs are comfortably within the courts' expansive definition of "prevailing party" regardless of the outcome of any future proceedings (including the pending appeal), for they have in fact obtained very substantial informal relief. Opinion's Findings of Fact ("Findings") 17-20, 562 F.Supp. at 1072-75, establish this action has caused major and permanent changes in defendants' practices of retention, and disclosure to criminal defendants, of potentially exculpatory evidence. Nothing in the pending appeal questions the accuracy of Findings 17-20. On the contrary, on appeal both sets of defendants assert their own implementation of changes (triggered by this lawsuit) as the very predicate for arguing the Opinion should not have gone beyond their "voluntary" actions. Thus the uncontroverted Findings confirm the concept plaintiffs have indeed "prevailed" by obtaining relief informally.⁴

Propriety of Interim Fees

Inquiry does not however end with the threshold determination of "prevailing party" status. Hensley teaches (103 S.Ct. at 1940) fee awards may be adjusted upward or downward in light of other factors, especially "the important factor of the `results obtained,'" which is "particularly crucial where a plaintiff is deemed `prevailing' even though he has succeeded on only some of his claims for relief." It goes on (id. at 1941) to invite District Courts to "attempt to identify specific hours that should be eliminated" to conform the fee award to plaintiffs' degree of success. Thus Hensley requires plaintiffs to be compensated for successful but not futile efforts.

Plaintiffs invoke Hensley's fee determination principles to obtain current payment of the amount below which their fee award will not fall even under the worst possible scenario. Because plaintiffs will receive at least that amount in the end, they ask it be awarded now. Their position is unassailable. Plaintiffs are "prevailing" and have engaged in successful efforts for which they will inevitably be compensated. Their attorneys have spent hundreds of hours on the case without pay, and it may be years before a final evaluation of their success in every phase of the case can be made. Moreover Hanrahan v. Hampton, 446 U.S. 754, 757, 100 S.Ct. 1987, 1989, 64 L.Ed.2d 670 (1980) (per curiam) expressly authorizes fee awards pendente lite.⁵

Amount of the Fee Award

Even on a worst-case basis, a substantial amount of plaintiffs' attorneys' hours to date have supported successful efforts for which Hensley entitles them to compensation. All their time spent through October 29, 1982 led up to and triggered the informal relief described in Findings 17-20. City Defendants themselves acknowledge in their appeal (Br. 13-14, citations to record omitted):

After then Police Superintendent Brzeczek's testimony on October 29, 1982, the Court adjourned the hearing to allow the parties to attempt to resolve the litigation. The CPD immediately issued a telex to its areas consistent with the Superintendent's position. The CPD also prepared a draft detective division notice incorporating new record-keeping practices implementing the Superintendent's declared policy.

That Chicago Police Department telex and draft detective division notice are part and parcel of the informal relief that forms the basis for this order.

Thereafter plaintiffs rejected defendants' measures as inadequate to solve the problems they perceived, and they returned to this Court for resumption of their preliminary injunction proceedings. Those added efforts were successful before this Court, but their ultimate success is not yet assured (because of the pending appeal). In view of that uncertainty, this order limits its award of reasonable attorneys' fees to plaintiffs to cover only the efforts expended by their attorneys through October 29, 1982.

Plaintiffs' attorneys have provided extensive documentation of their time spent and the purposes to which the time was devoted. Their documentation includes both a daily time catalog for each attorney (filed July 29, 1983) and a subject matter breakdown for each attorney and each phase of the litigation (filed November 15, 1983). In addition they provided copies of their original timesheets to defendants and now this Court (filed November 16, 1983).

Defendants' objections to the fee request are vague and generalized, alleging for example (City Def. Mem. 8) "pretrial uncertainties on the part of Plaintiffs' counsel." Plaintiffs' attorneys however have not submitted fee requests for hours spent on duplicative efforts,⁶ and they have invited a further deduction in the interests of fairness (Motion ¶ 6):

6. Given the fact that Plaintiffs employed two to four lawyers throughout the litigation, we suggest that a reduction of hours — perhaps 10% might be appropriate to account for unavoidable duplication.

This Court finds plaintiffs' attorneys have made "a good faith effort to exclude from their fee request hours that are excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary, just as a lawyer in private practice ethically is obligated to exclude such hours from his fee submission" (Hensley, 103 S.Ct. at 1939-40).

Plaintiffs' submission (including their attorneys' detailed affidavits as to their qualifications, plus the affidavits of other attorneys...