Cunningham v. County of Los Angeles

• Citation: 879 F.2d 481
• Decision Date: 20 June 1989
• Docket Number: No. 87-6596,87-6596
• Parties: Rufus E. CUNNINGHAM, Plaintiff, v. COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, et al., Defendant-Appellee, and Richard Eiden, Real-party-in-interest-Appellant.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (9th Circuit)

Page 481

879 F.2d 481

Rufus E. CUNNINGHAM, Plaintiff, v. COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, et al., Defendant-Appellee and Richard Eiden, Real-party-in-interest-Appellant.

No. 87-6596.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted Aug. 1, 1988.

Decided Oct. 11, 1988.

As Amended March 3, 1989.

As Amended on Denial of Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc June 20, 1989.

Robert Mann, Santa Monica, Cal., and Richard Eiden, Los Angeles, Cal., for plaintiff-appellant.

DeWitt Clinton, S. Robert Ambrose, Dennis Gonzales, and Kevin Brazile, Los Angeles, Cal., for defendant-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

Before WALLACE, FARRIS and WIGGINS, Circuit Judges.

FARRIS, Circuit Judge;

Rufus Cunningham, a peace officer for the California Department of Insurance, brought an action on a claim of false arrest and wrongful search against employees of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the County. He prevailed in his action, although not on all grounds asserted in the complaint or against all defendants. He appeals: 1) the amount of the award for attorney's fees under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1988; 2) the imposition of Fed.R.Civ.P. 11 sanctions against his counsel; and 3) the failure to award him his costs as prevailing party.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL OVERVIEW

Cunningham filed suit against the County of Los Angeles; Sheriff Sherman Block; Sheriff Deputies Robert Birdsall, Richard Papp, and Richard Payne; and Sergeants David Brusby and Edgar Price. He alleged that his arrest by the Sheriff's Department was unsupported by probable cause and resulted in a "deprivation of liberty, invasion of his privacy, and violation of his civil rights." He also contended that the Sheriff's Department has a "custom, policy and practice of racial discrimination against Blacks." He claimed compensatory damages of $20,000 and punitive damages of $500,000.

On April 22, 1987, Los Angeles County and Sheriff Block moved for summary judgment on the theory that no policy or custom attributable to the County was the legal cause of Cunningham's constitutional deprivation. Cunningham did not oppose the motion, which was granted. On May 26, 1987 just before trial, the court also dismissed all counts against Sergeant Brusby and Deputy Sheriff Payne.

The trial began on May 26, 1987. Prior to closing arguments or jury instructions, the case settled for $5,000. Because the settlement labeled Cunningham the prevailing party, he became entitled to seek attorney's fees under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1988. The trial court ordered a hearing on Cunningham's motion for attorney's fees and issued an order to show cause why the naming of certain defendants in the complaint should not be deemed a violation of Fed.R.Civ.P. 11.

At the hearing, the district court awarded attorney's fees of $7,500 to Cunningham and assessed monetary sanctions against him in the sum of $5,000. Counsel for the County and Sheriff Block later submitted a declaration detailing fees and costs at $4,719, and the court reduced the Rule 11 sanctions to this amount.

Cunningham appealed in a timely fashion. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1291.

I. THE ATTORNEY'S FEE AWARD

Section 1988 provides that in federal civil rights actions or proceedings, "the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney's fee as part of the costs." 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1988. We review the district court's assessment of attorney's fees for abuse of discretion. Jordan v. Multnomah County, 815 F.2d 1258, 1261 (9th Cir.1987); Hardin v. White Mountain Apache Tribe, 779 F.2d 476, 480 (9th Cir.1985). "The district court's discretion to award attorney's fees under Sec. 1988 has, however, been narrowly construed and is circumscribed by decisions of the Supreme Court and this circuit." Jordan, 815 F.2d at 1261 (citations omitted). In order to facilitate our review of its exercise of discretion, the district court should "provide a concise but clear explanation of its reasons for the fee award." Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 437, 103 S.Ct. 1933, 1941, 76 L.Ed.2d 40 (1983).

The legislative history of Sec. 1988 does not explain what constitutes a "reasonable" attorney's fee, but it does endorse the multi-factor guidelines developed by the Fifth Circuit in Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc., 488 F.2d 714, 717-19 (5th Cir.1974). See also Kerr v. Screen Extras Guild, Inc., 526 F.2d 67, 69-70 (9th Cir.1975), cert. denied, 425 U.S. 951, 96 S.Ct. 1726, 48 L.Ed.2d 195 (1976). The Supreme Court has interpreted this endorsement of a flexible standard by adopting a two-part test to channel the district court's exercise of discretion. Under this "hybrid approach" to the calculation of a reasonable attorney's fee for the prevailing party, courts must first calculate a lodestar amount by multiplying the number of hours reasonably expended on the litigation by a reasonable hourly rate. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 433, 103 S.Ct. at 1939. Next, the court may increase or reduce the presumptively reasonable lodestar fee, see Quesada v. Thomason, 850 F.2d 537, 539 (9th Cir.1988) (citing City of Riverside v. Rivera, 477 U.S. 561, 106 S.Ct. 2686, 91 L.Ed.2d 466 (1986)), with reference to the Johnson/Kerr factors that have not been subsumed in the lodestar calculation, see Wood v. Sunn, 865 F.2d 982, 991-992 (9th Cir.1988) (identifying several factors that have been subsumed); Clark v. City of Los Angeles, 803 F.2d 987, 990 & n. 3 (9th Cir.1986).

A. The Lodestar Figure

The only dispute on appeal with respect to the lodestar calculation concerns the number of hours reasonably expended on the case. The district court, after considering Cunningham's requests of $26,120 for work on the merits and $3,037.50 for work on motions relating to attorney's fees and sanctions, fixed the lodestar figure at $12,000. This amount was based on the hourly rate of $135 claimed for Cunningham's attorney, Richard Eiden, and the hourly rates claimed for Eiden's clerks. The court accepted both of these rates as reasonable. In determining the number of hours to be figured into the lodestar, however, the court reduced the figure claimed by Cunningham because it deemed this number of hours excessive. We review this decision for abuse of discretion.

The starting point of our review of the record must be a "recogni[tion] that deference is to be given to a district court's determination of a reasonable attorney's fee." Chalmers v. City of Los Angeles, 796 F.2d 1205, 1213 (9th Cir.1986), amended, 808 F.2d 1373 (9th Cir.1987). On the one hand, we need "some indication or explanation of how the district court arrived at the amount of fees awarded" because without an adequate explanation, "it is simply not possible for this court to review such an award in a meaningful manner." Id. On the other hand, we do not require an elaborately reasoned, calculated, or worded order; a brief explanation of how the court arrived at its figures will do. See, e.g., Quesada, at 539 Slip Op. at 7458 (although "we would have preferred a more detailed explanation ..., the district court['s brief comments were] enough to review its decision").

Substantively, both the Supreme Court and our cases have emphasized the discretionary nature of the court's determination of the number of hours reasonably expended. One factor that may be used to reduce this number is inadequate documentation. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 433, 103 S.Ct. at 1939. Assuming that the party seeking attorney's fees submits evidence supporting a particular number of hours worked, the court may credit that party with fewer hours if the time claimed is "excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary." Id. at 434, 103 S.Ct. at 1939. Among the factors that may justify a gap between the hours actually spent and the number of hours deemed reasonable are: (1) the overstaffing of a case or a demonstration of exceptional skill and efficiency; and (2) the relative novelty and complexity of the issues raised. Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434, 103 S.Ct. at 1939; Chalmers, 796 F.2d at 1212.

We focus first on the requirement that the district court give at least a brief explanation of its reasoning and calculations. In the portion of its order devoted to determining the lodestar amount, the court justified its view that the time spent on the case was unreasonable with reference to Cunningham's level of success. The court did not express any doubts that the time claimed by Eiden was actually spent. ¹ Instead, it analyzed the claims brought against the various defendants and concluded, based in part on the fact that only three of the seven defendants named in the complaint remained at trial, that Cunningham's level of success was not high. The order then reduced the number of hours to reflect the lack of success. In addition, the court stated that the twenty-two hours that Eiden devoted to the Rule 11 sanctions threatened against him by the court do "not reflect a civil rights claim successfully pursued," and should therefore be deemed unreasonable for lodestar calculation purposes. On the basis of these two reductions, the court set the lodestar figure, which encompasses "work on the merits and on the post-settlement motions," at $12,000.

Courts need not attempt to portray the discretionary analyses that leads to their numerical conclusions as elaborate mathematical equations, but they must provide sufficient insight into their exercises of discretion to enable us to discharge our reviewing function. As in Quesada, the order before us is hardly a model of clarity, and we would have preferred a more straightforward calculation of the number of hours reasonably spent. Nonetheless, the court's citations and numerical conclusions are helpful, and the explanation of its reasoning gives us a good indication of how the court's discretionary authority was exercised in this case. We conclude that the attorney's fee order...