Blanchard v. Bergeron

• Decision Date: 21 February 1989
• Docket Number: No. 87-1485,87-1485
• Citation: 103 L.Ed.2d 67,489 U.S. 87,109 S.Ct. 939
• Parties: Arthur J. BLANCHARD, Petitioner v. James BERGERON et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

489 U.S. 87

109 S.Ct. 939

103 L.Ed.2d 67

Arthur J. BLANCHARD, Petitioner

v James BERGERON et al.

No. 87-1485.

Argued Nov. 28, 1988.

Decided Feb. 21, 1989.

Syllabus

After a jury awarded petitioner $10,000 in damages on his claim that respondent sheriff's deputy had beaten him and thereby deprived him of his civil rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the Federal District Court awarded him $7,500 in attorney's fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988, which provides that the court, "in its discretion, may allow . . . a reasonable attorney's fee" to a prevailing party in certain federal civil rights actions, including those under § 1983. The Court of Appeals reduced the fee award to $4,000, ruling that petitioner's 40% contingent-fee arrangement with his lawyer served as a cap on the amount of fees that could be awarded. The court also found that hours billed for the time of law clerks and paralegals were not compensable since they would be included within the contingency fee.

Held:

1. An attorney's fee allowed under § 1988 is not limited to the amount provided in the plaintiff's contingent-fee arrangement with his counsel. To hold otherwise would be inconsistent with the statute, which broadly requires all defendants to pay a reasonable fee to all prevailing plaintiffs if ordered to do so by the court acting in its sound judgment and in light of all the circumstances of the case. This Court's decisions have required that the initial estimate of a reasonable court-awarded fee be calculated by multiplying prevailing billing rates by the hours reasonably expended on successful claims, which "lodestar" figure may then be adjusted by other factors. The Court has never suggested that any one such factor should substitute for the lodestar approach. In fact, the lodestar figure is entitled to a strong presumption of reasonableness and prevents a "windfall" for attorneys in § 1983 actions by guaranteeing that they receive only the reasonable worth of the services rendered. Thus, as § 1988's legislative history confirms, a private fee arrangement is but one of the many factors to be considered and cannot, standing alone, impose an automatic limitation on the exercise of the trial judge's discretion, which is central to the operation of the statute. Moreover, such a limitation might place an undesirable emphasis on the importance of the recovery of damages, whereas § 1988 makes no distinction between damages actions and equitable suits but was intended to encourage meritorious claims, irrespective of their nature, because of the benefits of civil rights litigation for the named plaintiff and for society at large. Fee awards in § 1983 damages cases should not be modeled upon the contingent-fee arrangements used in personal injury litigation, which benefits only the individual plaintiff. Pp. 91-96.

2. Since the Court of Appeals erred in ruling that the fee award was controlled by the contingency arrangement, it must consider the determination of the total fee award on remand. P. 97.

831 F.2d 563 (CA5 1987), reversed and remanded.

WHITE, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and BRENNAN, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, STEVENS, O'CONNOR, and KENNEDY, JJ., joined. SCALIA, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, post, p. 97.

William W. Rosen, New Orleans, La., for petitioner.

Edmond L. Guidry, III, St. Martinville, La., for respondents.

Justice WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.

The issue before us is whether an attorney's fee allowed under 42 U.S.C. § 1988 is limited to the amount provided in a contingent-fee arrangement entered into by a plaintiff and his counsel.

I

Petitioner Arthur J. Blanchard brought suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana alleging violations of his civil rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Blanchard asserted that he was beaten by Sheriff's Deputy James Bergeron while he was in Oudrey's Odyssey Lounge. Blanchard brought his claim against the deputy, the sheriff, and the St. Martin Parish Sheriff's Department. He also joined with his civil rights claim a state-law negligence claim against the above defendants and against the owners and a manager of the lounge and the lounge itself. The case was tried and a jury awarded Blanchard compensatory damages in the amount of $5,000 and punitive damages in the amount of $5,000 on his § 1983 claim. Under the provisions of 42 U.S.C. § 1988, which permit the award of attorney's fees to a prevailing party in certain federal civil rights actions,¹ Blanchard sought attorney's fees and costs totaling more than $40,000. The District Court, after reviewing the billing and cost records furnished by counsel, awarded $7,500 in attorney's fees and $886.92 for costs and expenses.²

Petitioner appealed this award to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, seeking to increase the award. The Court of Appeals, however, reduced the award because petitioner had entered into a contingent-fee arrangement with his lawyer,³ under which the attorney was to receive 40% of any damages awarded should petitioner prevail in his suit. While recognizing that other Circuits had different views, the court held that it was bound by its prior decision in Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc., 488 F.2d 714, 718 (1974), to rule that the contingency-fee agreement "serves as a cap on the amount of attorney's fee to be awarded." 831 F.2d 563, 564 (CA5 1987). The court further found that hours billed for the time of law clerks and paralegals were not compensable since they would be included within the contingency fee. Ibid. Accordingly, the court limited the fee award to 40% of the $10,000 damages award—$4,000.

Because other Courts of Appeals have concluded that a § 1988 fee award should not be limited by a contingent-fee agreement between the attorney and his client,⁴ we granted certiorari to resolve the conflict, 487 U.S. 1217, 108 S.Ct. 2869, 101 L.Ed.2d 904 (1988). We now reverse.

II

Section 1988 provides that the court, "in its discretion, may allow . . . a reasonable attorney's fee. . . ." The section does not provide a specific definition of "reasonable" fee, and the question is whether the award must be limited to the amount provided in a contingent-fee agreement. The legislative history of the Act is instructive insofar as it tells us: "In computing the fee, counsel for prevailing parties should be paid, as is traditional with attorneys compensated by a fee-paying client, 'for all time reasonably expended on a matter.' " S.Rep. No. 94-1011, p. 6 (1976), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1976, p. 5913 (citing Davis v. County of Los Angeles, 8 EPD ¶ 9444 (CD Cal.1974); and Stanford Daily v. Zurcher, 64 F.R.D. 680, 684 (ND Cal.1974)).

In many past cases considering the award of attorney's fees under § 1988, we have turned our attention to Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc., supra, a case decided before the enactment of the Civil Rights Attorney's Fee Award Act of 1976. As we stated in Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 429-431, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 1938, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983), Johnson provides guidance to Congress' intent because both the House and Senate Reports refer to the 12 factors set forth in Johnson for assessing the reasonableness of an attorney's fee award.⁵ The Senate Re- port, in particular, refers to three District Court decisions that "correctly applied" the 12 factors laid out in Johnson.⁶

In the course of its discussion of the factors to be considered by a court in awarding attorney's fees, the Johnson court dealt with fee arrangements:

" 'Whether or not [a litigant] agreed to pay a fee and in what amount is not decisive. Conceivably, a litigant might agree to pay his counsel a fixed dollar fee. This might be even more than the fee eventually allowed by the court. Or he might agree to pay his lawyer a percentage contingent fee that would be greater than the fee the court might ultimately set. Such arrangements should not determine the court's decision. The criterion for the court is not what the parties agree but what is reasonable.' " 488 F.2d, at 718 (quoting Clark v. American Marine Corp., 320 F.Supp. 709, 711 (ED La.1970), aff'd 437 F.2d 959 (CA5 1971)).

Yet in the next sentence, Johnson says "In no event, however, should the litigant be awarded a fee greater than he is contractually bound to pay, if indeed the attorneys have contracted as to amount." 488 F.2d, at 718. This latter statement, never disowned in the Circuit, was the basis for the decision below. But we doubt that Congress embraced this aspect of Johnson, for it pointed to the three District Court cases in which the factors are "correctly applied." Those cases clarify that the fee arrangement is but a single factor and not determinative. In Stanford Daily v. Zurcher, 64 F.R.D. 680 (ND Cal.1974), aff'd, 550 F.2d 464 (CA9 1977), rev'd on other grounds, 436 U.S. 547, 98 S.Ct. 1970, 56 L.Ed.2d 525 (1978), for example the District Court considered a contingent-fee arrangement to be a factor, but not dispositive, in the calculation of a fee award. In Davis v. County of Los Angeles, supra, the court permitted a fee award to counsel in a public interest firm which otherwise would have been entitled to no fee. Finally, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 66 F.R.D. 483 (WDNC 1975), the court stated that reasonable fees should be granted regardless of the individual plaintiff's fee obligations. Johnson's "list of 12" thus provides a useful catalog of the many factors to be considered in assessing the reasonableness of an award of attorney's fees; but the one factor at issue here, the attorney's private fee arrangement, standing alone, is not dispositive.

The Johnson contingency-fee factor is simply that, a factor. The presence of a pre-existing fee agreement may aid in determining reasonableness. " 'The fee quoted to the client or the percentage of the recovery agreed to is helpful in demonstrating attorney's fee...