Miller v. Staats, 82-1637

• Decision Date: 29 April 1983
• Docket Number: No. 82-1637,82-1637
• Citation: 706 F.2d 336,227 U.S. App. D.C. 299
• Parties: 31 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 976, 31 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 33,559, 227 U.S.App.D.C. 299 Otha J. MILLER et al. Richard Nissley et al., Appellants v. Elmer B. STAATS, Comptroller of the United States, et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

Page 336

706 F.2d 336

31 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. 976,

31 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 33,559, 227 U.S.App.D.C. 299

Otha J. MILLER et al. Richard Nissley et al., Appellants v. Elmer B. STAATS, Comptroller of the United States, et al.

No. 82-1637.

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued Feb. 28, 1983.

Decided April 29, 1983.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (D.C. Civil Action No. 73-00996).

Kathleen Pontone, Richard T. Sampson, Semmes, Bowen & Semmes, Baltimore, Md., was on brief, for appellants.

Gerald M. Goldstein, Sp. Asst. U.S. Atty., Washington, D.C., with whom Stanley S. Harris, U.S. Atty., and Royce C. Lamberth, R. Craig Lawrence, and Ann S. DuRoss, Asst. U.S. Attys., Washington, D.C., were on brief, for appellees.

Before WRIGHT, WILKEY and WALD, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the court filed by Circuit Judge J. SKELLY WRIGHT.

J. SKELLY WRIGHT, Circuit Judge:

Appellants, plaintiff-intervenors in the District Court, represent a class of white male employees who negotiated a consent decree with appellees, the General Accounting Office (GAO) and the General Services Administration (GSA), regarding certain alleged reverse discrimination actions. ¹ After the District Court approved their consent decree, appellants learned that appellees proposed to enter into a potentially conflicting agreement with a group of minority and female employees. They successfully intervened in that litigation and succeeded in having changes made to the proposed decree. Appellants then filed a petition under Section 706(k) of Title VII, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000e-5(k) (1976), for attorney fees incurred in the intervening litigation. The District Court denied the petition because appellants were not "prevailing parties" within the meaning of the statute. We find that the District Court applied an improper standard in determining appellants' "prevailing parties" status. Therefore, we vacate its decision and remand for further proceedings on the attorney fees petition.

I. BACKGROUND

This attorney fees petition arose out of an alleged conflict between two independent Title VII discrimination suits. The first suit began in May of 1973 when a class representing black and female employees--the Miller class ²--initiated legal action alleging that appellees had discriminated by using racial and sexual criteria in their employment actions. Because plaintiffs' earlier administrative complaints were resolved against them, ³ the District Court rejected plaintiffs' preliminary motions for class certification and summary judgment, thereby forcing the action into hibernation. In 1977, however, an intervening Supreme Court decision ⁴ prompted the District Court to reverse itself and stirred the class to resume its action. On proper motion, the court ordered discovery to commence and officially certified the plaintiff class. ⁵

Meanwhile, in March of 1978 another class of GAO/GSA employees, representing white males (the Smith class), filed suit, alleging reverse discrimination in employment. See Smith et al. v. Staats, Civil Action No. 78-0098 (D.D.C.1979). After numerous hearings concerning the alleged reverse discriminatory policies and practices were held, ⁶ the parties agreed to settle their dispute. ⁷ They proposed a broad consent judgment in which appellees would agree not to discriminate on the basis of race, ⁸ would assure that any affirmative action programs did not adversely impact the promotional opportunities of white males, ⁹ and would apply their personnel policies openly and evenhandedly in the future. ¹⁰ The District Court approved this settlement in March 1979. App. 364.

The concurrent Miller litigation was rapidly moving forward. ¹¹ In December 1980, however, after exhaustive discussions, the parties finally agreed to enter into a consent decree of their own. This decree provided, in pertinent part, that GAO would establish a settlement fund in lieu of all monetary claims, ¹² would develop and implement job-related performance standards, ¹³ would establish certain promotional goals for minority and female employees, ¹⁴ would develop and implement training programs, ¹⁵ and would allow plaintiffs to monitor GAO's compliance with the decree through stipulated reporting mechanisms. ¹⁶ On December 19, 1980 the District Court preliminarily approved the consent judgment.

As provided in the decree, the Miller settlement was circulated among appellees' employees to give them an opportunity to object to any part of the agreement. App. 366. When they received the proposed decree, various members of the white male class became concerned. Their counsel alerted appellees that the proposed Miller decree might be in conflict with the Smith decree, ¹⁷ but these warnings apparently fell on deaf ears and went unheeded. ¹⁸ Worried that the District Court would approve conflicting settlements, Smith counsel next sought to intervene ¹⁹ in the Miller litigation. ²⁰ Both the Miller class plaintiffs and appellees vigorously resisted this intervention. ²¹

On July 14, 1981 the District Court allowed the Smith class ²² to intervene in the Miller litigation. It further ordered the parties to meet and to "attempt to resolve their differences over paragraph 21 of the Proposed Consent Decree * * *." App. 161. The parties did meet, but could not obtain a mutually satisfactory resolution. On August 6, 1981 the District Court further admonished the parties to settle their differences and, as a result, agreement was finally reached. App. 146.

On August 10, 1981 the District Court approved a final Consent Decree in the Miller litigation. This final order included all of the changes that the Smith plaintiffs, the Miller plaintiffs, and appellees had agreed upon on August 6. For example, the "minimum" qua "minimum" promotional goals and the requirement that appellees justify their failure to meet such goals were deleted from Paragraph 21. ²³ Moreover, the Smith plaintiffs were accorded substantial rights to receive reports and continue monitoring the decree. ²⁴ With these and other demands met, ²⁵ the Smith class offered no more objections to the entrance of the Miller decree.

Appellants subsequently filed their petition for attorney fees and costs, asking $26,023.75 for legal services and $2,449.24 for costs. App. 84. Appellees opposed the petition on the ground that appellants were not "prevailing parties" within the meaning of Title VII's attorney fees provision. App. 77.

On May 27, 1982 the District Court denied appellants' petition for attorney fees. The court noted that appellants, as full parties to the action, "did, in some sense, prevail in the underlying case by virtue of the fact that they succeeded in having the affirmative action provisions of that consent decree modified * * *." App. 3. Nonetheless, it found that appellants were not "prevailing parties" within the meaning of the statute:

First, there is no way of establishing that the proposed affirmative action provisions were originated by any actions of this defendant; on the contrary, it seems quite likely that such provisions were requested by the original plaintiffs during the settlement discussions. Since the proposed decree was negotiated among and entered into by all of the original parties, why should this particular defendant be required to assume the costs of the plaintiff-intervenors' efforts to modify the decree.

Second, even if defendant GAO could be charged with some degree of responsibility as a result of its originally consenting to the proposed affirmative action provisions, there has been no determination made that these provisions would in fact have resulted in legally cognizable and actionable discrimination against those represented by plaintiff-intervenors. Instead, all the court has before it are the facts that the plaintiff-intervenors believed the provisions would result in discrimination against their clients and that the original negotiators of these provisions agreed to modify them after discussions with the plaintiff-intervenors; these facts appear insufficient to support a threshold finding by this court that the provisions in issue did, in fact, propose and/or authorize actual discrimination against white males at GAO. * * *

App. 5-6 (emphasis in original). Thus, even though "plaintiff-intervenors may well have performed valuable services to both their clients and * * * the public by intervening in this proceeding," App. 6, the District Court would not award attorney fees because appellants had not "proven the defendant guilty, to some degree, of discrimination * * *." App. 4.

Plaintiff-intervenors filed this petition for review on June 7, 1982. We now vacate the District Court's judgment and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

II. ANALYSIS

Under Title VII the District Court must award attorney fees to the prevailing party in civil rights litigation unless special circumstances would render such an award unjust. New York Gaslight Club, Inc. v. Carey, 447 U.S. 54, 100 S.Ct. 2024, 64 L.Ed.2d 723 (1980); Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC, 434 U.S. 412, 98 S.Ct. 694, 54 L.Ed.2d 648 (1978); Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405, 95 S.Ct. 2362, 45 L.Ed.2d 280 (1975); see also Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc., 390 U.S. 400, 88 S.Ct. 964, 19 L.Ed.2d 1263 (1968) (same under Title II). It is well recognized that the attorney fees provisions are to be liberally applied because the private "plaintiff is the chosen instrument of Congress to vindicate a 'policy that Congress considered of the highest priority.' " Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC, supra, 434 U.S. at 418, 98 S.Ct. at 698 (quoting Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc., supra, 390 U.S. at 402, 88 S.Ct. at 966). ²⁶ District Courts, therefore, have only narrow discretion to deny fee awards ²⁷ and must find that parties have "prevailed" whenever their actions have arguably advanced the purposes of Title VII. ²⁸...