Carroll v. Blinken, 83 Civ. 1272 (RO).

• Decision Date: 03 October 1995
• Docket Number: No. 83 Civ. 1272 (RO).,83 Civ. 1272 (RO).
• Citation: 899 F. Supp. 1214
• Parties: Thomas M. CARROLL, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Donald M. BLINKEN, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

899 F. Supp. 1214

Thomas M. CARROLL, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Donald M. BLINKEN, et al., Defendants.

No. 83 Civ. 1272 (RO).

United States District Court, S.D. New York.

October 3, 1995.

Martin S. Kaufman, Atlantic Legal Foundation, Inc., New York City (Douglas Foster, of counsel), for Plaintiffs.

Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, New York City (Jocelyn Lee Jacobson, of counsel), for New York Public Interest Research Group.

Dennis C. Vacco, Attorney General of the State of New York, Andrea Green, Deputy Solicitor General, New York City, for State Defendants.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

OWEN, District Judge.

Plaintiffs who were students objecting to a particular allocation of their student activity monies by their university, seek attorney's fees from that university, State University of New York, and the student activity NYPIRG (an acronym for the New York Public Interest Research Group) to which a fraction of their fees was allocated by the university. This application pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988¹ stems from litigation commenced by plaintiffs which sought to enjoin the university from such allocation—the mandatory funding issue. Subsequently, years after the action was commenced, in the Findings and Conclusions submitted before trial, the plaintiffs first raised the issue of NYPIRG's automatic membership policy, by which, under NYPIRG's by-laws all fee-paying SUNY Albany students were considered NYPIRG members—the compelled membership issue. The majority of the complex procedural history of this case is irrelevant to the application at hand. For purposes of this petition, it is sufficient to note that a request for attorney's fees was previously denied on the ground that plaintiffs were not a "prevailing party" within the scope of 42 U.S.C. § 1988.² On appeal, however, the Second Circuit held that plaintiffs were entitled to attorney's fees as the prevailing party on the separate issue of compelled membership. Carroll v. Blinken, 42 F.3d 122, 130 (2d Cir.1994). However, the Court also specifically held that plaintiffs could not be considered the prevailing party on the mandatory funding issue, stating at 130:

The district court was correct in its decision not to award attorney's fees to appellants on the basis of their challenge to mandatory funding of NYPIRG.

On remand, plaintiffs submitted the instant application requesting attorney's fees in the amount of $558,156.25 and costs in the amount of $25,744.04. Defendants opposed on several grounds including plaintiffs' failure to itemize the hours spent on the compelled membership claim. The matter was conferenced before me on March 31, 1995. At that time, plaintiffs were directed to itemize their fee requests and to review the application for improper entries. I alerted plaintiffs to one such entry, charging for time traveling to and from court and filing papers at a law partner's rate of $225.00 an hour.³ Defendants were given an opportunity to submit opposition papers to plaintiffs' fee application.

Defendants did submit a detailed analysis of plaintiffs' fee application. It is clear that defendants expended considerable time and effort attempting to identify improper requests and itemize the fees by issue. In sharp contrast, plaintiffs utterly failed to itemize their fees and revise improper requests. On the contrary, plaintiffs used their submission as an opportunity to seek a $200,000.00 enhancement of their initial fee request. In a later submission, plaintiffs explained their failure to itemize the fees by stating: "All of the work by plaintiffs' counsel ... whether related to compelled funding or compelled membership was inextricably intertwined. These were not distinct issues, but, like Siamese twins, joined at the hip and at the head." Plaintiffs' only nod to this Court's instructions was the admission that "some reduction of the lodestar figure is warranted."⁴ In short, I view plaintiffs' application to be a complete failure to comply with the explicit instructions of this Court.

"The fee applicant bears the burden of establishing entitlement to an award and documenting the appropriate hours expended and hourly rates. The applicant should exercise `billing judgment' with respect to hours worked, and should maintain billing time records in a manner that will enable a reviewing court to identify distinct claims." Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 437, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 1941, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1982) (citations omitted). The Hensley Court noted that while there is "no certain method of determining when claims are `related' or `unrelated' ... at least counsel should identify the general subject matter of his time expenditures." Id. Where a prevailing party fails to provide adequate documentation, the district court may reduce the award accordingly.⁵Id. at 433, 103 S.Ct. at 1939. In this case, plaintiffs were directed by the Court to itemize their requested fees.⁶ Such categorization was necessary for two reasons. First, the Second Circuit explicitly held that plaintiffs were to be considered the prevailing party only on the separate and obviously minor issue of compelled membership, and not on the major and important issue which sparked this litigation, the issue of the university's decision to allocate monies received from students to support various and diverse student activities deemed by it to be of value to students to further their education, even though some might have views antithetical to those of some students. Second, where "a plaintiff has achieved only partial or limited success, the product of hours reasonably expended on the litigation as a whole times a reasonable hourly rate may be an excessive amount. This will be true even where the plaintiff's claims were interrelated, nonfrivolous, and raised in good faith."⁷Id. at 436, 103 S.Ct. at 1941. Plaintiffs' failure to prevail on the mandatory funding issue, the central issue in this protracted litigation, demonstrates that their success was, at best, "partial or limited." Thus, an award of attorney's fees based on the litigation as a whole would clearly be excessive,⁸ especially in light of the Supreme Court's pronouncement that "the most critical factor is the degree of success obtained." Id. This is especially troublesome, where plaintiffs want the Court to impose these fees on a state university and its student activity, state-wide though the latter is.

In the absence of a proper attorney's fees application, "the district court may attempt to identify specific hours that should be eliminated, or it may simply reduce the award to account for the limited success. The court necessarily has discretion in making this equitable judgment." Hensley, 461 U.S. at 436-37, 103 S.Ct. at 1941. In light of plaintiffs' failure to submit a proper application, I am left with no choice but to exercise my discretion and determine a reasonable attorney's fee. I note that defendants are to be commended for attempting to itemize plaintiffs' fee requests, performing a task that should have been undertaken by plaintiffs. Defendants' painstaking efforts yielded a proposed award...